


Through Basin and Range

by story_monger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Road Trips, discussion of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 10:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 63,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_monger/pseuds/story_monger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From Yellowstone to Zion to the Grand Canyon, the American West offers the perfect setting for the quintessential summer road trip. At least, that's the hope. To be perfectly honest, Cas is largely there to look at cool rocks, figure out a thesis for his geology masters degree, and untangle why he and Dean broke up after eight years of dating. Sam is trying to escape the ghosts of a bad relationship, manage the train wreck that is Dean and Cas with minimal headaches on his part, and figure out what it means that a certain Kevin Tran keeps texting him. Dean's mainly wondering why he agreed to live out of a tent with his ex-boyfriend and little brother for an entire summer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> Many, many thanks to my artist [jazzy2may](http://jazzy2may.livejournal.com) and to [darcydelaney](http://darcydelaney.livejournal.com) for her detailed beta work!
> 
>  
> 
> [[ Art Masterpost ]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2579279/chapters/5740157)
> 
> [[ Playlist ]](http://8tracks.com/story_monger/through-basin-and-range)
> 
> [[ Inspo Tag ]](http://story-monger.tumblr.com/tagged/through+basin+and+range/)

"Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch

by inch America is giving itself

to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness

lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.

You aren’t alone. All of the continents used to be

one body. You aren’t alone. Go to sleep."

 

_The Sciences Sing a Lullabye_

_Albert Goldbarth, 1948_

 

 

"Never go on trips with anyone you do not love."

 

_Ernest Hemingway_

 

* * *

  

Stepping into warm, mid-May sunlight right after the last final exam of the semester ranked as one of the best feelings in the world, Sam decided. He tilted his face up at the dogwood trees that stood sentry outside the anthropology building, grinning and letting the sun pour over his face. Maybe a few students would look at him funny, but Sam didn’t particularly care.

Starting across the quad, Sam fished his cell phone from his pocket, turned it off silent, and sent a text to Dean and Cas.

[Sam] _Officially done with my junior year!_

Sam’s thumbs paused above the screen before he added, _:DDD_. Just because he liked the mental image of Dean’s reaction. Sam had barely made to the other side of the quad before his phone vibrated against his thigh.

[Cas] _Congratulations Sam. I’m almost done proctoring the Mineralogy final. Do you want to get lunch somewhere to celebrate?_

Sam avoided a gaggle of underclassmen in shorts and bright floral skirts as he typed a reply.

[Sam] _Sure I’ll come find you and we can take your car?_

[Cas] _Sounds good_.

Sam cut through the physics building and headed for the north end of campus. He passed students lounging in whatever scraps of grass the campus had to offer, soaking up the sun, chatting or studying for upcoming finals.

Dean’s reply came as Sam approached the geology building.

[Dean] _Good job Sammy. Bet you get all A’s again, you nerd._

Sam grinned again. A second text came a moment later.

[Dean] _I get off work at five. We can head to the bar to celebrate._

_Cool,_ Sam sent back.

The geology building sent a rush of air conditioning into Sam’s face as soon as he stepped inside, offering the familiar scent of soil and old linoleum. Sam hiked his backpack further on his shoulders and strode past the front offices, the rock and mineral displays, and a smattering of students doing last minute studying.

He jogged up the stairs and ambled down the second floor hall to where the department’s classroom lab stood: at the end of the hall and on the right.

When Sam peered through the closed door’s little window, he found a forest of microscopes and, among them, three remaining students staring down at their desks with pained expressions. Cas leaned against the table at the front of the classroom. Sam waved. Cas glanced over, smiled slightly, then gestured to the three remaining students. Sam nodded and retreated from the door. He plopped his backpack on the floor and slid down to a sit next to it, leaning his head against the off-white plaster wall. He closed his eyes and let a long sigh escape him. The geology department was a small one, and most of the undergrads had disappeared by now, so Sam remained largely undisturbed as he sat sprawled in the hallway and let himself be still for the first time in several weeks.

His eyes snapped open fifteen minutes later when the door opened. Sam hauled himself to his feet as the three students from earlier filed out, all looking various degrees of defeated. One of them, an undergrad Sam recognized from around the building, flashed him a brief smile before following her classmates down the hall.

“What the hell was the answer to the one about glaucophane?” one of her companions asked. “Did we even _learn_ about that?”

Any answer was lost as the trio disappeared down the steps. Sam stuck his head into the classroom.

“ _Did_ they learn about glaucophane?” he asked.

“I mentioned it a few weeks ago.” Cas tapped the stack of exams against the table. “I can’t give them all easy questions, can I? How did psychology go?”

“Eh.” Sam entered the classroom and wiggled a hand. “The multiple choice was fine but the essay question threw me for a loop.” He leaned on the table, bit his lip, then said, “I think I’ll pass the class, at least.”

“Of course you will. Here, do you want to see glaucophane?” Cas picked up another thin section—a small, rectangular plate of glass with a hair-thin sheet of rock on it—and smiled slightly. “It’s one of my favorite minerals.”

“Sure.” Sam followed Cas to one of the fifteen microscopes that had been set up for the lab final. Cas slid the thin section onto the microscope’s stage and peered through the eyepiece. He shifted the thin section around a few times, adjusted the focus knob, then stepped back.

Sam squinted through the eyepiece and, as per usual whenever he’d looked at these thin slices of rock, initially didn’t see much except for a lot of translucent blobs.

“Spin the stage,” Cas instructed. “The glaucophane is the one that changes color.”

Sam did as instructed and almost immediately found a long, thin mineral that pulsed lavender and pale blue.

“It’s beautiful,” he admitted.

Cas nodded. “This sample has especially good colors. I felt like the students would remember that one.” When Sam lifted his head, he found Cas heading back toward the front table. “Help me tidy up, and we can get to lunch faster,” Cas called back.

Sam slid the thin section from the microscope’s stage and held it up to the light. The slice of rock looked translucent at this vantage point. No glimmer of blue or purple at all.

***

Sam, Dean, and Cas had found The Sub Shop one hazy, alcohol-fumed night when they’d been wandering around north campus and Dean had been complaining about the drunk munchies for the last hour. Cas had seen the flickering sign, dragged Sam and Dean in its direction, and ordered two hoagies, which Dean had wolfed down with a lot of moaning and loud declarations that Cas was the best boyfriend ever.

The memory still made Cas’ mouth twitch. Followed up by a small stab somewhere near his ribs, yes. But that didn’t negate the memory of Sam laughing so hard he couldn’t eat his toasted turkey sub, or Dean’s warm weight as he listed against Cas, or the way Cas’ chest had expanded into something huge and warm that night.

Unlike most college eateries, The Sub Shop proved edible for both the smashed and the sober, so it had become one of Cas’ routine lunch spots for the rest of that semester.

He’d stopped going there about a year ago. It was never a conscious decision.

When Cas and Sam stepped out of the geology building that bright May day, Cas told Sam he got to pick where they would eat.

“What about The Sub Shop?” Sam asked after a moment. He glanced down at Cas. “We haven’t been there in a while.”

Cas paused for a split second.

“No,” he finally agreed. “We haven’t.”

They entered the small shop ten minutes later. While Sam ordered a veggie hummus wrap, Cas looked around and noted a fresh coat of paint, unfamiliar employees, a few new items on the menu, and not much else difference. He supposed that people changed more quickly than college town sandwich shops, in the long run.

He and Sam chose to eat outside at one of the small tables shaded by ostentatious green canopies. They chatted about Cas’ mineralogy students, Sam’s schedule for next year, and other small, easily digestible topics.

When they’d finished their sandwiches, they lapsed into old, comfortable silence and watched people walk past them.

“So,” Sam broke the silence first. “How’s the masters thesis coming?”

Cas didn’t mean to flinch, but he definitely did flinch. Sam caught it and gave him a sympathetic grin.

“That bad?” he asked.

“Well.” Cas scooted his chair forward and folded his hands on the table. “After a long talk with my advisor, it turns out that the Brooks Range project isn’t going to happen.”

“So no Alaska trip?” Sam’s face fell.

“No Alaska trip,” Cas agreed. He scrubbed at the side of his face. “I shouldn’t be so surprised. Raphael warned me that the funding for this project was still up in the air and not leaning in our favor but…” He shrugged. “I was counting on it, stupidly enough.”

“Cas, I’d be counting on it too,” Sam said. “It’s _Alaska_.” He tilted his head. “What’re you going to do now?”

“I have this summer still.” Cas watched a young couple walk past, their hands intertwined. “If I have a topic put together by August I should be all right. Worst comes to worst, I can stay an extra year to finish it if I have to.”

“Hm.” Sam leaned back in his chair, and Cas watched his eyes catch on the young couple as well. Without meaning to, Cas released a long sigh. Sam’s eyes shot back to him immediately, and his face broke into that sweet smile that Cas still remembered from when Sam had been tiny, chubby, and sporting sloppy curls.

“It’ll be fine,” Sam promised. “You’re a genius at this stuff. You’ll get a topic and funding no problem.” Cas hadn’t been sighing about his languishing masters thesis, but he returned the smile nonetheless.

“What about you?” he asked. “Do you have a plan for the summer yet?”

The smile disappeared from Sam’s face so abruptly that Cas regretted asking.

“Um.” Sam rubbed at the back of his head and squinted at the pavement. “I mean, I had planned to apply for some internships at a few different law firms but. Y’know. With Ruby. I kinda missed most of the deadlines.” Cas knew this, but he remained silent. Sam dropped his hand. “I’ve been trying to look around online for some options. All else fails, I can ask for my job at the bookstore again.”

“But Ruby…” Cas trailed off.

“We don’t _have_ to work near each other.” Sam shrugged. “And the money would be good to have. Dean’s shifts at the garage have been getting kind of scarce.”

Cas pressed his lips together before speaking.

“Sam,” he said, leaning forward and dropping his voice slightly. “There’s a reason you quit that job. You shouldn’t be near her. Not unless you have to be.”

“She can’t do anything,” Sam all but mumbled.

“Sam. Sam, look at me.” Hazel eyes met Cas’. “We’ll help you find an alternate option.” Sam huffed a slight laugh.

“Yeah, okay,” he said after several seconds.

***

Dean’s drive home felt shorter than usual. Which was pretty standard, in his experience, when he was seriously not looking forward to what lay at the end of the trip.

A Honda swerved in front of Dean, forcing him to slam on the brakes and let loose a string of abuses. He lay on the horn long and hard enough that the tight feeling in his chest loosened by a few degrees.

When Dean pulled into his spot in the apartment’s parking lot a few minutes later, he didn’t immediately get out of the car. Instead he stared at the steering wheel and fiddled with the pendent Sam had given to him years ago.

When Dean finally let himself into the apartment, he found Sam sprawled on the ugly floral couch with a book. That forced a grin from Dean despite everything else. The kid finally finishes with his classes and he buries himself into a book. Typical Sammy.

“Hey.” Sam looked up as Dean shut the door behind him.

“Hey. What you got there?” Dean jerked his head.

“ _Golden Compass_.” Sam held up the book briefly.

“Again?”

“Books can be read multiple times, Dean,” Sam told him.

“Yeah, got it.” Dean messed up Sam’s hair to the predictable tune of “ _Jesus_ Dean, stop it!” and ambled toward the kitchen to see what he could throw together for dinner.

“How’d the final go?” Dean called out.

“Pretty good,” Sam called back. “The essay question was hard but I think I managed something readable.”

“I wouldn’t be too worried.” Dean opened a Tupperware container of noodles and sniffed. He immediately wrinkled his nose. “The prof loves you.”

“I missed a lot of classes mid-semester,” Sam said.

“And you bounced back, didn’t you?” Dean dumped the noodles in the trash, threw the container in the sink, and pulled out one of the two pots the Winchesters had to their name. “You feel like spaghetti and meatballs?”

“Sure.” This sounded closer, and Dean looked up to find Sam at the kitchen entryway, his hands in his pockets.

“You okay?” Dean asked. Sam gave a one-shouldered shrug and trained his eyes on the floor, which set off ten kinds of alarms in Dean’s head.

Sam inhaled then rushed, “I’d been thinking about working at the bookstore this summer and Cas said it was a bad idea.”

“Of course it’s a bad idea.” Dean took a step closer. “Dude, I know you want a job. But we can help you find a better option, okay?” Sam snorted. “What?”

“That is practically verbatim what Cas told me.” Sam peered at Dean with a tiny grin. “I swear, sometimes you guys are the same person.”

“Yeah, well.” Dean slapped Sam on the shoulder. “It’ll be okay.” Which felt like an outright lie, considering, but it was Dean’s job to say things like that to his little brother. So he said it and promised himself he’d tell Sam his news by tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.

Sam wandered back to his book while Dean whipped up dinner. The task calmed him down a little; he found something unfailingly therapeutic about chopping things up.

“So we still up for the bar?” Dean asked when he and Sam were at the tiny kitchen table with their plates of spaghetti. “Or would you rather read all night?”

“Nah, the bar sounds good.” Sam sopped up spaghetti sauce with a slice of bread.

“You, um. You could invite Cas. Or someone,” Dean offered. He didn’t think he imagined the note of sympathy in Sam’s expression.

“We had lunch today already,” Sam told him. “Don’t worry.”

Sam focused on twirling ropes of spaghetti around his fork, leaving Dean to watch the locks of hair hanging in his brother’s eyes and consider that this must be what divorced parents feel like.

“What about your buddies from tutoring, then?” Dean asked. “That one mini version of you.”

Sam lifted his head and frowned into the middle distance.

“Kevin?” he finally guessed.

“Yeah.”

“Dean, have you met Kevin? I don’t think he’s ever touched alcohol in his life.” Sam flicked his hair from his eyes. “Besides, he’s not 21 yet.”

“We could sneak him in,” Dean mused, mostly to see the eye-roll from Sam. He got it in full force, and that made him grin unabashedly.

***

In the end, Sam and Dean went to the bar by themselves. Which was how they usually did things, anyway.

Well. Within the last year at least.

In Sam’s head, _usually_ still meant Sam, Dean, and Cas.

_Usually_ meant Dean getting drunk and dedicating off-key rock ballads to Cas on karaoke nights.

_Usually_ meant Cas and Sam ignoring Dean’s insistence that hard cider was gross and ganging up on him with inside jokes as old as their friendship.

It meant Cas living across the hall, Dean accompanying Cas and Sam on campus while they studied, Cas and Dean trading kisses when they thought Sam wasn’t paying attention.

But _usually_ had gone for a loop in the last year, and Sam had stopped thinking that the old patterns would come back. He knew now that if he invited Cas to their old haunts, Cas would come. He and Dean would put up a convincing facsimile of their old selves. They’d chat about unimportant things and play darts and probably even get each other laughing after a few beers. Sam would sit between them and act as the buffer without anyone acknowledging it.

And it would be a farce and it would hurt like hell.

So Sam didn’t call Cas at all, and instead he got himself very drunk.

***

Cas sat in his office grading mineralogy exams. Though, “office” was a generous term for Cas’ workspace. If he wanted to give an honest description, he’d tell someone to imagine a long, thin walk-in closet. Split that closet into three sections. Then assign each section a narrow desk that came with a small shelf, slab of corkboard, and about enough space to fit a laptop and a pile of papers. It wasn’t so bad with one or even two of the graduate students in there. When they had Cas, Hael, _and_ Meg, plus three to five undergraduate students coming in for help or to ask about their grades, it became a little less than bearable. But on a Thursday evening in the last week of classes, Cas had the whole graduate office to himself and he took full advantage of it.

Cas had just finished grading the fifth exam (ten more to go) when a knock on the open door made him lift his head. Hael leaned into the room, dark hair in a loose bun on top of her head.

“Hey!” she chirped. “Just wanted to pop in and say bye.”

“Where—oh! You’re headed to Arizona already?” Cas asked.

“Flying out tomorrow morning.” Hael bobbed her head. “Still need to pack, of course.” She rolled her eyes. “I always tell myself I’m going to be prepared ahead of time and then I end up throwing three pants and five shirts in a duffel and calling it good.”

“Don’t we all?” Cas grinned. “Well, tell the Grand Canyon hello from me. Take lots of pictures.”

“Of course.” Hael hung off the door handle. “You take pictures of Alaska, we can exchange when we get back.”

“About that.” Cas sighed and tilted back in his chair. “Turns out that the funding didn’t come through.”

“Oh. Shit. That sucks.” Hael made a face. “I’m sorry Cas, I know you were looking forward to that.”

“It’s not the worst thing.” Cas waved a hand. “I’m just not sure now what my thesis is going to be on.”

Hael pursed her lips.

“I mean. There’s always Chuck’s research,” she offered.

Cas groaned.

“He’s a cool guy!” Hael protested.

“He’s very personable, yes. But he’s a _seismologist_ ,” Cas emphasized. “Do you want to know what I got on my seismology project back at field camp? I barely scraped up a C, Hael. I am not cut out for looking at squiggles all day.”

Hael threw up her hands. “Putting it out there,” she said. “But seriously Cas, I wouldn’t make this a big deal. You’re a mountain guy, right? Pick a mountain range that’s close by and go for it.”

“All the really good geology is in the west though,” Cas muttered.

Hael shrugged. “Then go west. You have a whole summer.”

Cas looked at Hael. She had a point.

He _did_ have a whole summer.

***

Dean…did not tell Sam his news on Wednesday night. He also didn’t tell him Thursday morning. He felt that he had a good excuse though. Wednesday, he and Sam were too busy drinking shitty beer and finding their own jokes more and more hilarious. Thursday morning, they were too busy shuffling around the apartment and making each other swear they’d never take tequila shots again.

But by the time they settled down on the sagging couch with their cartons of take-out for lunch, Dean had well and truly run out of excuses.

“So when’s your next shift at the garage?” Sam asked as he dug around his carton with his chopsticks.

“Sunday,” Dean said truthfully.

“Really?” Sam made a face over at Dean. “You only went in three times this week.”

“Business is slow.” Dean sighed and set down his carton. “Okay, Sammy.” He folded his hands. “I gotta…um.”

Sam’s chopsticks slowed down.

“So. The garage is shutting down.” Dean peered up to find Sam’s eyes wide and his mouth slightly open.

“That’s not good,” Sam said after several heartbeats.

“Yeah.” Dean leaned back in the couch and scrubbed at his face. He felt wrung out suddenly. “I think I saw it coming. The drop in my hours for one. And they let go of a bunch of people last month. But I guess I assumed that we’d keep limping along like we always do. Then Harvey made the announcement this morning. My last day is Sunday.”

Sam set down his carton as well.

“Well,” he braced his elbows on his thighs, “this doesn’t have to be a _bad_ thing, exactly.”

Dean side-eyed Sam.

“Sorry, kid,” he said. “But I’m failing to see the silver lining of unemployment.”

“You know what I’m talking about.” Sam cocked his head.

Dean’s face screwed up with incredulity. “School?” he asked. “You’re talking about—Sam, we can’t afford to have both of us in school. There’s this thing called _money_ —“

“Bobby and Ellen,” Sam interrupted. “They’ve offered to help more than once. You know they’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“They’re not exactly rolling in dough.”

“Fine.” Sam leaned forward. “But we could make it happen. And with a degree you’d be way more employable. Get better pay. Not have to work in a garage for jerks who don’t appreciate your skills.”

“I like working with cars,” Dean scowled.

“Engineering, Dean.” Sam spread his hands. “What do you think you’d work with if you got a mechanical engineering degree, huh? Engines. Cars. No one’s asking you to give that up.”

Dean stood and stalked over to the kitchen, obstinately grabbing a cup from the shelf and filling it with water.

“I know what you’re thinking!” Sam yelled from the living room.

“Good for you.”

“They take students your age all the time. And you’re absolutely smart enough, so don’t try and argue that one.”

“We’re done, Sam.”

“Cas would back me up.”

“Cas isn’t here.” Dean thumped the cup on the countertop harder than he meant to. Perhaps Sam realized that he’d crossed a line, because he didn’t have a snappy comeback. Instead, Dean heard his brother creak from the couch and pad across the worn carpet. He appeared at the kitchen entryway a moment later.

“Will you look at the application information?” Sam asked. “It doesn’t even have to be to this school.”

“I’m not leaving you here by yourself next year,” Dean said.

Sam looked at the floor. “Cas would be around,” he reminded him.

Dean released a sigh that was more akin to a groan.

“Fine,” he bit out. “I’ll check it out. But I’m also going to be job hunting. You still need to eat; you’re skinny enough as it is.”

“Fair enough.” Sam nodded once. The kid was smiling slightly, like he’d just won something, and that made Dean wonder whether he ought to be suspicious.

***

Later that afternoon, Sam entered the tutoring center to find it all but empty. Finals were largely done by now, and most people were busy packing up their dorm rooms and selling back textbooks.

One tutor-student pair sat in the back of the room. A few tables away from them, a head of black hair bent over a laptop festooned with political slogan stickers.

“Hey Kevin,” Sam called out as he neared. Kevin jerked his head up and grinned.

“Hey. You have a last-minute student too?”

“Nah.” Sam leaned on a chair. “I’m meeting with Stacey for my evaluations.”

“Oh, that’ll be a breeze. Your students love you.” Kevin waved a hand. “I’m pretty sure that redhead has a crush on you.”

“Liam?” Sam made a face. “I think he’s just a flirt to everyone.” He nodded at the political sciences textbook waiting at Kevin’s elbow. “You meeting with one of your poly sci students?”

“Yup.” Kevin slumped in his seat. “Just my luck that the university put that final on Friday. But then again, extra pay for working during finals week, right?”

“Mm,” Sam mused. After a beat, “The tutoring center doesn’t hire for the summer, does it?”

“I think they have a few positions. But the point of summers is to have internships and real jobs,” Kevin pointed out. “Tutoring is something you do during the school year for the extra cash and to put on your resume.”

“Dunno.” Sam gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Might be my best option at this point.”

Kevin straightened. “What? Why?”

Sam offered a small smile. “Just not sure yet what I’m doing this summer. I’ve had a rocky last couple months and a lot of my original plans are sort of bust.” Sam closed his mouth, surprised by his own frankness.

Kevin’s brow was furrowed. “What happened?”

Sam huffed a thin laugh.

“Uh. Relationship stuff,” he said. Which was true.

“Oh.” Kevin had the sense not to push the subject. He was a good kid, in that regard.

The front door of the tutoring center opened then, and a girl with a bulging backpack and a harried expression entered.

“Well, I’ll let you go,” Sam said. “You have a good summer, okay? I’ll probably see you in August.”

“Sure.” Kevin visibly hesitated. “Here.” He flipped open his notebook and ripped out a sheet. Sam watched him scribble something on it. “My cell number,” Kevin said, handing the paper to Sam. “We can keep in touch.”

Kevin was definitely red, and Sam had the sudden urge to ruffle his long hair.

“Thanks.” Sam folded the paper up and stuck it into his pocket. “I’ll keep you abreast of all my exciting developments.”

“Yeah.” Kevin grinned. “Same.”

***

Kevin was still working with the poly sci student when Sam left Stacey’s office. (Overall a decent review. Some scolding for cancelling so many appointments a few months ago, but Sam had been expecting that.)

Sam considered waving goodbye, but Kevin had a concentrated expression that made Sam decide to leave it. Instead, he stuck his hand in his pocket, fingered the paper with the phone number, and pushed the front door open. A wave of heat swept across his skin; a welcome change from the just-above-frigid temperature at which administration kept the tutoring center.

Sam aimed for the library. He could start job hunting in earnest; maybe he’d get lucky somewhere.

He was just passing the student center when he heard his name.

“Sam! Hey, Sam!”

Sam should have kept walking. Maybe even gone into a run. Instead he stopped and turned around, slowly.

She looked remarkably like she had when they’d first met. Confident. Beautiful. Keen-eyed and a little predatory. A year ago, that had drawn Sam in. Now, in the middle of campus under the swaying branches of the pin oaks, it made his stomach sour and his heart leap at the same time.

“Hey you,” Ruby panted slightly as she jogged up. “Haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Yeah.” Sam’s mouth stretched into a tight smile. “Same.”

“What’re you up to? How did finals go?” Her nose crinkled as she smiled. Sam had always liked that.

Sam nodded. “Finals were good. Um, just going to do some job hunting.”

“Right, those things.” Ruby laughed. “Hey, me and Jeff and some of the rest are driving into the city tonight for a concert. No idea who’s playing but Jeff is into them. You should come.”

“Um…” Sam rubbed at one forearm and glanced to the right. “I had plans for tonight.”

“What, hanging out with Dean?” Ruby asked. Sam returned his attention to her in time to see her eyebrows hike up. “C’mon, it’s all the old group. Jeff and Fiona and Pete. They’re asking about you, you know; you never hang out anymore.”

_I’m making new friends_ , Sam wanted to say, but that sounded petty and childish even in his own head.

“Sorry,” Sam said. “I can’t.”

Ruby rolled in her lips, eyes narrowing. “Why?” she asked.

“I just don’t want to be tempted,” Sam blurted. “I’ve been clean for two whole months.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “One puff of weed wouldn’t be the end of everything.”

Sam rubbed one hand over his face. He imagined, for a moment, saying yes. He imagined telling Dean and Cas that he was going out with some classmates and not mentioning the names of those classmates. He imagined them all crammed in Jeff’s old car, laughing and complaining about professors. Someone would pass something around eventually. Something relatively harmless like pot. Or something more potent. Sam would no doubt be pressed up against Ruby and she’d ask him why he couldn’t just relax, just one hit Sam, it would make him feel so good. Sam would give in eventually. And at some point he’d be drunk and high and Ruby would be there (she was always there) and she’d be whispering indistinguishable things and her hand would travel down…

“I don’t want to.” Sam’s grip on his backpack straps was iron tight. “Sorry. I…no.” Before Ruby could say anything else, he turned around and broke into a speed walk.

“Sam!”

Sam kept walking.

***

Cas was coming back from the bathroom when he found Sam leaned up against the wall outside his office. When Sam lifted his head, his expression looked strained, and that made Cas pick up his pace.

“Hi,” he said as he neared. “Trying to escape the heat?”

Sam shrugged. Cas’ eyes narrowed.

“You okay?” he asked as he stopped in front of Sam and tried to find his face behind the hair.

“Sure,” Sam said.

“What happened?”

“Nothing _happened_.” Sam licked his lips. “I’m escaping the heat—you were closer than Dean.”

“Okay,” Cas said slowly. He scrutinized Sam’s face for a moment. “Do you want a ride home?”

Sam’s lips tightened. “I didn’t ask for—“

“But that’s why you’re here.” Cas tilted his head.

Sam remained silent.

“C’mon,” Cas said. “I’m driving you home.”

He patted Sam on the shoulder and told him to wait while Cas fetched his keys. A few minutes later, they slid into Cas’ car. Sam braced his backpack between his long legs and stared out the window for most of the drive. Cas glanced over every so often.

When they pulled into the apartment’s parking lot, Cas automatically parked in his old spot.

“Should I come up?” Cas asked when he turned off the engine.

Sam sighed and threw open the passenger side door. “If you want to,” he said. Cas watched Sam slam the door shut. He exhaled sharply, got out of the car, and followed Sam to the battered door with the peeling ‘#104’ on it.

When Sam opened the door, they found Dean at the table squinting at his laptop screen with one hand buried into his hair. He glanced up and froze.

“Hey,” he said a few beats too late.

“I was just dropping Sam off.” Cas stayed at the front door’s threshold as Sam walked into the apartment and tossed his backpack onto the floor. “I’ll—“

“Don’t need to run off.” Dean stood. Cas still didn’t move. “C’mon, you’re letting the air conditioning out.”

Cas slowly stepped into the apartment and closed the door behind him. He didn’t kick off his shoes or throw his jacket on the back of the couch. Things didn’t work like that anymore.

Sam had disappeared into the kitchen; Cas could hear things banging around with more enthusiasm than usual. Dean scrutinized Sam, then glanced over at Cas.

_What happened?_

Cas shrugged. _He won’t say._

Dean puttered his lips and scrunched his mouth to one side.

“If you’re hungry, we still have spaghetti,” he called out to Sam.

“Not hungry.” A cupboard door slammed.

“You want to stop trying to break the kitchen, then?” Dean asked. “Otherwise you’re the one fixing it.”

Cas could hear Sam’s exhale and smiled slightly despite himself. It was such a familiar exchange.

“Here, Sam.” Dean’s hand twitched at Cas, beckoning him to follow Dean into the kitchen. “You eaten lunch yet?”

A beat of silence.

“No,” Sam admitted.

“Cas?”

“Busy inputting grades,” Cas said as he crossed the living room.

“Okay then.” Dean pointed at the table. “You two sit. I’m making lunch.”

“Dean—” Sam started.

“Grilled cheese okay?”

Sam rolled his eyes and collapsed into one of the chairs. He folded his arms on the surface and propped his chin on his forearm.

“Do you want help?” Cas asked Dean. Dean grinned slightly, and the edges of his eyes crinkled in that way Cas always adored.

“I’m okay,” Dean said.

He shot his glance over at Sam, then met Cas’ eyes again and lifted his eyebrows. The last time they’d done this must have been over a year ago, but Cas thought they could still pull it off. The “make Sammy talk about what’s bugging him” game had roots deeper than any of the complications between Dean and Cas.

Dean moved to throw open the fridge. Cas turned to the kitchen table to find that it still had three chairs. Not without a touch of self-consciousness, he sat down in his old seat.

He let himself watch Dean’s broad back as he pulled out a package of sliced cheese, bread, and a tub of margarine. The margarine’s brand was different, Cas noticed. When he’d lived here, he’d usually done the shopping and bought the organic brand. Now Dean pulled out the “I can’t believe it’s not butter” stuff. It still produced an odd punch in Cas’ gut.

“How’d the meeting go, Sammy?” Dean asked as he pulled out a pan.

“Fine,” Sam told the tabletop. “How I expected.”

“Which meeting? For tutoring?” Cas asked.

“Yeah, we get an end-of-semester evaluation.” Sam lifted his eyes to Cas. “I asked Stacey about summer hiring. She said the applications had been due back in March. So.”

“Well I guess I know what _we’re_ doing the next few days,” Dean said humorlessly. “Anyway, what’d Stacey say?” Dean slapped the first sandwich into the pan; it produced a thin _hiss_.

“I did a good job when I wasn’t busy being high and not showing up for appointments,” Sam deadpanned.

Cas and Dean caught each other’s eyes. The grilled cheese’s sputtering produced the only sound for several seconds.

“Did you tell her you’re past that?” Cas asked, his voice steady.

Sam blinked hard.

“I ran into Ruby,” he said in a rush. His voice sounded thick. Cas’ lips automatically pressed together. Dean shifted at the stove. When Cas glanced over, he found Dean’s white-knuckle grip on the spatula.

Neither of them spoke because Sam had that little furrow on his brow and he’d lifted his chin off of his arms.

“You know what gets me?” Sam asked, still speaking at the tabletop. “She always acts so normal. It’s like we’re just buddies who haven’t talked for a while. She,” Sam exhales a thin laugh, “she invited me to go to a concert tonight. And basically said one hit wouldn’t hurt anything.”

Something thudded. Cas and Sam looked over to find that Dean had slammed the spatula into the counter.

“Sorry,” Dean said in an even voice. “I don’t like that chick.”

Sam snorted. Cas grinned a little reluctantly. Dean shook his head and picked the spatula back up so he could flip the sandwiches.

“What did you do?” Cas asked.

“I talked to her a little,” Sam admitted. “But I just…walked away eventually.”

“That’s good, Sam,” Cas assured him. “That was the right thing to do.”

“I…” Sam licked his lips. “I kind of wanted to say yes. I miss that group and then I also still want to use. In a fucked up way.”

“Of course you wanted to go.” Cas leaned back in his chair. “Those are your friends. And you don’t just stop wanting the things you were mildly addicted to.”

Sam screwed up his face at the word “addicted,” but Cas didn’t see how he’d be doing Sam any favors by mincing words.

“He’s right,” Dean said. “And hey, you know what? I bet Cas and me are a better time than a bunch of college students hotboxing.”

Sam’s mouth twitched. “Right,” he replied. “Definitely.”

Dean gave Sam a shit-eating grin as he grabbed a plate and plopped a grilled cheese on it. He slid it in front of Sam and ruffled his hair. Sam threw up one shoulder but didn’t pull away.

Cas felt something inside him relax at the exchange.

“Cas, you want milk?” Sam asked as he stood and headed for the fridge.

“Sure.” Cas leaned back to peer into the fridge as Sam opened it. “Is it skim?”

“You kidding?” Dean’s voice came from much closer. “I get lectures if I dare to bring home the 2 percent kind.”

Cas whipped his head up and got hit with a face full of Dean grinning at him. It was the same smile that Cas remembered from fourth grade when Dean had been the new kid in his classroom and used it to charm the teacher. The essence of it never changed, Cas had decided a long time ago, even if its edges had gotten heavier.

Cas took a moment to realize that Dean was holding a plate out to him. He accepted the grilled cheese sandwich with a quiet thank you.

(In the old days, Dean would have dropped a kiss to his hairline.)

“No problem.” Dean shrugged as he returned to the stove. Sam knocked the fridge door close with his foot and filled a glass of milk for the two of them. Cas looked between the Winchester boys; Dean’s broad back and stiff shoulders, the line between Sam’s brows.

He pulled at his mouth and scooted his chair up to the table.

“I have a proposition,” he said.

Two pairs of eyes landed on him.

“I don’t know if Sam told you this, Dean, but my previous plans for Alaska have gone bust.”

“Really?” Dean flicked the stove off and leaned against it, arms crossed and head cocked forward. “Does it screw you up too much for your thesis?”

“It doesn’t have to,” Cas told him. “Not if I have an idea by the beginning of fall semester. And I was thinking.” Cas looked to Sam. “Sam, do you remember that road trip we talked about once? Way back in your senior year of high school?”

Sam looked puzzled for several seconds before his expression cleared.

“The one out west?” he asked. An old glimmer appeared in his eyes. It had been there when Sam had been of rounder face and shaggier hair, when he’d spent all school year reading about the Western U.S. and then come to Cas with spun out plans for a summer road trip. Just the three of them, a few good tents, the Impala, and the open road.

Cas had admitted that the concept held appeal. For several days he and Sam had batted ideas back and forth, more and more stops getting shoved onto their itinerary.

But then, life had happened. Sam ended up with a great summer job that paid well but left no time for vacations. Cas got mired in his senior thesis research. Dean took extra shifts at the garage because the rent had gone up and he insisted that Sam save the money from his summer job “because law school sure as hell isn’t free.”

The idea had fallen to the wayside. Something they’d get to eventually. And then Dean and Cas had happened. Ruby had happened. Life.

“Wait,” Dean said now. His face had screwed up. “You’re saying you want to do a road trip? This summer?”

“Yes.” Cas turned to him. “It would let me figure things out for my masters thesis. And Sam, you don’t have any plans, right?”

“Right.” Sam nodded hard. “Dean...” he paused. Cas’ heart sank slightly. Awkward, of course. Dean had his job with the garage; he couldn’t disappear for three months and hope to keep it. Not that Cas wouldn’t have a wonderful time road tripping with Sam, but he knew Dean well enough to predict that it would sting Dean to be left behind. He would act as if he didn’t care either way, and all the while those latent fears of abandonment would creep over him.

“Yeah, um, I’ve lost my job.” Dean waved a hand and gave a self-deprecating grin. Cas twisted around to face Dean.

“What? How?” he demanded. “You’re the only one with any talent in that place.”

“Um.” Dean’s smile had veered into something smaller yet more pleased. “Kinda hard to keep employees when the whole place is shutting down.”

Cas lifted his chin slightly.

“Oh,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sam focusing on the tabletop and hiding a grin beneath his hair. Cas really had no idea what was so amusing, but then again, sometimes Sam found humor in the oddest of situations.

“So,” Dean continued. “If you two needed a…I guess a ride. Baby and me don’t have too much planned.”

_I don’t want you there for a ride,_ Cas thought. _I want you there for you._ He didn’t think that saying that out loud would go over well, so he didn’t.

“Let’s do it then,” Sam said. Cas turned to find him grinning so hard that his eyes had all but disappeared. “Seriously,” he said. “When else are we going to have an opportunity like this?”

He had a point. Cas looked over to Dean and raised his eyebrows, to which Dean nodded. He looked cautiously pleased.

Then Cas thought, in crystal clear words that did not frighten him as much as intrigue him:

_I’m going to be stuck in the same car as my ex-boyfriend for a whole summer._

***

“You realize you’re going to be stuck in the same car as your ex-boyfriend for a whole summer?”

“Well,” Dean wrinkled his nose. “When you put it like that— _oof_.” He just managed to parry Charlie’s blow.

“It’s just the cold hard truth of it,” Charlie said practically, and then neatly batted away Dean’s lunge. “Like, if I were you, I’d give this some thought. That’s all.”

“Sam’s heart’s really set in this.” Dean sighed and struggled briefly to gain the upper hand as he and Charlie pressed their swords against one another.

“And he and Cas can’t handle themselves?” Charlie asked.

“Um.” Dean considered this as he feinted and then jabbed at Charlie’s midsection. He got a hit. “You’re dead,” he informed Charlie.

“Oh dear,” she said, then let her sword fall to her side. “Water break?”

“Sure.” Dean let his sword fall as well, and they meandered over to where their water bottles waited, weaving through other pairs practicing their sword fighting. Dean just barely avoided getting whapped in the head when Garth swung his sword with a tad too much enthusiasm.

“Oy. These things can still do some damage,” Dean called out to him. “Watch it.”

“Yup!” Garth called back then performed a thrust that made his partner leap back and swear emphatically.

“Your troops look promising this year, your Highness,” Dean said as he grabbed his water bottle. “Won’t be losing the crown without a fight.”

“Mm,” Charlie hummed. “I’d be more confident if I had my captain.” Charlie looked at him sideways.

“Ok, yeah, Sam and Cas are adults,” Dean said. He tipped his head back and studied the slightly overcast sky. “But I know for a fact that neither of them have changed a tire in their lives. And I could just see them geeking out over some…some rock outcrop and crashing. Or getting lost because they just _had_ to get off the trail and look for an obscure camping site that some hippie douche on the Internet swore was worth it and— what?”

Charlie had a hand over her mouth and her shoulders were shaking.

“Man,” she said once she’d swallowed her mouthful of water. “Never mind. Letting you go might be a matter of life and death.”

“Yeah yeah,” Dean muttered and took a swig from his bottle. He watched the setting sun make long, twisting shadows out of their sparring LARP team. He heaved a sudden sigh.

“Listen.” Charlie patted his arm. “You want to go, you go. I’m just being selfish.”

“No, I mean…” Dean rubbed at the back of his neck. “You’re right. I am willfully placing myself in a contained space with my ex-boyfriend and little brother for several weeks. Sounds like the beginning of an awful comedy.”

“Yeah but, you and Cas are different.” Charlie shrugged.

“Different how?” Dean glanced over.

“Like,” Charlie said, hitching herself up on the picnic table and placing her feet on the seat, “you guys are still friends. I hang out with you two, I don’t even sense any animosity between you. No awkwardness.”

Fair enough. Dean could agree that he and Cas remained downright amiable toward one another if they kept their interactions to a few hours every other week. Longer than that though, someone was bound to say something scathing and make all of it collapse like a poorly built tower of cards. Charlie hadn’t had the privilege of witnessing it; that was all. She hadn’t heard the words they exchanged like blows. Even when they weren’t actively arguing, Dean couldn’t pretend for a second that they were back to where they were before. You didn’t date someone for nearly eight years and just go back to normal. There was no “back to normal” at that point.

“Yeah, well.” Dean took a final swig of water before screwing the cap back onto his bottle. “Exes are kind of a mess no matter how you swing it.”

Charlie studied their view of the park and the sparring LARPers for another several seconds.

She seemed to come to a decision and shoved at Dean. “Welp, it’s your call, Dean. C’mon, it’s my turn to beat your ass.”

“Big talk coming from someone who clocks in at 5’5’’,” Dean told her.

“Oh, short jokes. Such original humor Dean. We can upgrade you to court jester.”

But Charlie was grinning, and Dean couldn’t help but grin back.

***

Dean was not grinning that night.

Maybe he was letting Charlie’s doubts get to him, or maybe they had been his own doubts all along. But as Dean stared up at his cracked drywall ceiling, his mind raced through more and more reasons that this road trip was a _terrible_ idea.

By one in the morning, he had a list:

 

Dean Winchester’s List of Reasons That This Road Trip is a Terrible Idea

  1.      Money. Gas and camping sites and restaurants cost money. Something Dean does not have much of. Which leads to:
  2.      Dean will still have to pay rent on the apartment. He can’t pay rent when he doesn’t have a job.
  3.      Speaking of jobs, Dean needs to get a new one, and he can’t job hunt when he’s road tripping.



 

Dean liked the list up to this point. All very practical concerns, he thought. Then:

           

  1.      Sam and Cas both have god-awful taste in music and will probably want to listen to it.
  2.      Sam will stick muddy boots up on the dashboard.
  3.      Cas will want to take them on all kinds of back roads to find obscure geology features, and he’ll recruit Sam to gang up against Dean to make it happen.
  4.      Dean will give in eventually because his defenses against Sam and Cas’ combined forces are woefully inadequate.
  5.      Cas will insist they go camping, and that means pit toilets and no showers.
  6.      Cas will shout at Dean to “stop right now, there’s a beautiful road cut we need to go look at it and take pictures.”
  7. Again, Dean will comply (even while complaining loudly.)
  8. Because Cas will have that look to him.
  9. That completely enraptured expression, like he’s discovered the secrets of the universe in a few miles of exposed rock bed.
  10. Dean will remember how Cas used to give him a version of that expression all the time.
  11. And how Dean doesn’t see it very much anymore.
  12. So of course Dean’s going to stop and let Cas geek out.
  13. Anything to keep that expression around a little longer.



 

Dean cut off his list abruptly and turned over onto his stomach. He moodily stared at the red numerals blinking at him from his alarm clock. Then, before he could talk sense into himself, he whapped blindly at the bedside table. He found the smooth, solid shape of his phone, flipped it open, and hit speed dial.

(He still had Cas on speed dial. That…probably wasn’t standard.)

Dean half expected Cas to not answer, but after three rings he heard a rustle and a low “Hello?”

“Hey Cas,” Dean said in an equally low voice, even though he knew from experience that he could have been shouting and still not woken Sam up. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“No,” Cas told him. “I’m just researching campsites.”

Naturally. Dean had proclaimed on more than one occasion that Cas’s internal clock had been installed backwards. His most productive hours were ass o’clock in the morning, which had made him a near useless study partner back in high school.

“About that. Um.” Dean rubbed at his eyes and considered that he was about to come off as the biggest douche. Cas waited patiently. “I’m having second thoughts,” Dean admitted.

“What about?” Dean heard something shifting in the background then a groan of worn floorboards as Cas walked across them.

“Cas, you sure you’re okay to talk?” Dean asked again.

“If I keep my voice down, yes,” Cas told him, not unkindly. “Uriel’s a light sleeper, that’s all.”

Dean could just imagine Cas right now. In a ratty t-shirt, pajama pants slung low, hair mussed from running his hand through it too many times. Most likely a pen stuck behind his ear and his glasses halfway down the bridge of his nose. Leaning against the countertop and idly watching the dark street through the kitchen window. He probably had his little herb pots set up along the sill and his pile of recipe books stacked in one corner of the countertop.

“How’re your herbs?” Dean asked.

He’d almost stopped himself. Almost.

“Doing well.” Cas’ voice grew warmer, and now Dean imagined the smile curling up the right side of Cas’ mouth and invading his eyes. His head tilting slightly. “The dill has made a remarkable comeback after Rachel’s cat knocked it over.”

“Good to hear,” Dean said.

A moment of silence.

“You were having second thoughts?” Cas prompted.

“Right. I—” Dean sat up properly and ran over his mental list again. After some consideration, he knocked off points four through sixteen. “I’m mainly thinking about the cost,” he said honestly. “I mean gas and food and lodging. And then I’m going to have to pay rent and I don’t have those kinds of savings and…” Dean trailed off. He exhaled slowly and rested his forehead on his hand.

“That’s a good point,” Cas told him. “Which is why it’s a good thing you won’t be paying for any trip expenses.”

“What?”

“I have some funds saved,” Cas said. “If we’re frugal, it should be enough to cover us for the trip.”

“Cas, you can’t do that.” Dean’s voice grew sharp. “Jesus, how much is it? I’m not letting you.”

“It’s my money,” Cas said. Dean realized that his tone had become flatter within the space of ten seconds. Shit. “And you don’t have any say in how I use it,” Cas continued.

“Yeah, but there has to be something else you need to pay for,” Dean protested. “Pay off loans or something.”

“I want this,” Cas said. “Stop, Dean.”

“Stop what?”

“This. You aren’t going to owe me anything, all right? You don’t always have to be everyone’s provider.”

It was such a tired, worn out phrase that it pissed Dean right off.

“Your trust fund going to pay my rent too?” he asked, just to get a rise.

“No,” Cas told him coldly. “I’d suggest a sublease. I can ask around; there’s always students looking for summer housing.”

Sublease. Right. Kind of obvious, now that Dean thought about it. He couldn’t help but wonder whether he was stupid or had been purposefully, subconsciously, obtuse about it.

“Okay,” Dean bit out. “Fine. You win.”

“There’s no winning,” Cas snapped. “Your obsession with having winners and losers is worrying and ridiculous _._ ”

Dean hated how those words stabbed at him. He considered hanging up right then and there. He gripped his phone—so hard he wouldn’t have been surprised if he cracked it—stared at the opposite wall, and really, deeply considered hanging up. Dean could tell Sam that he had decided to stay home. He’d call Charlie and let her know that her captain would be around after all. It would be fine.

All fine.

“Why you so intent on this trip?” Dean asked.

A sigh rattled his speaker.

“Masters thesis,” Cas all but recited.

“Why me and Sammy? You could have gone on your own.”

Distantly, Dean heard a tinny _meow_. The aforementioned cat must have found Cas.

“I’m worried about Sam,” Cas said. His voice drifted back into something that didn’t sound quite as stiff. “With Ruby…I’d prefer him out of town this summer. This place has too many memories, Dean. Too many triggers. It’d be good to be in a new setting.”

For a split second, Dean wondered whether Cas was referring to himself or Sam. Or both.

“I also know that Sam’s wanted to do something like this for years,” Cas continued. “And unfortunately no one’s schedule is going to get any less busy, and I…I’d like to do this for him now. While I still can.”

Dean huffed despite himself. Because it was Sammy, goddamnit. Dean, if anyone, understood exactly what Cas meant.

Dean must have remained silent for too long, because Cas said, “You still there?”

“Yeah,” Dean said.

“You should know…I mean. Sam would like you there.“ A pause. “I’d like you there too.”

_Shit._ Dean pinched at the bridge of his nose and wondered how he and Cas managed to dart from snapping at each other to…to _this_. It was giving him whiplash.

“You just want me for my car,” he said and tried for a note of levity.

“If I remember correctly—which I do—you offered,” Cas pointed out. Dean could all but see the rising eyebrow.

“A moment of stupidity and/or altruism on my part,” Dean said, and that tugged a chuckle from Cas. Dean’s heart fluttered.

“Is that you getting back on board?” Cas asked. “Otherwise I’m going to have to decide whether my car can handle another few thousand miles.”

“Yeah, no.”

“Or we could always hitchhike,” Cas mused.

“God no. You’d end up in a warehouse somewhere with your kidneys missing.”

“Oh dear.” Cas shifted the phone. “You’ll have to tell me how that one happens.”

“Pretty sure it starts with some shady dude trying to sell you nice rocks.”

“Mm,” Cas hummed. “Entirely possible.”

A few warm moments. It was like they were back in middle school, way past their bedtime and not willing to hang up.

“I’d better let you sleep,” Cas said, like he’d sensed the direction of Dean’s thoughts. “I’ll start asking around about subleasers. And Sam plans to come over tomorrow around lunchtime to hash out trip details so…if you’d like.”

Dean appreciated the invitation. More than he would have liked to admit. He probably wouldn’t end up going; Sam was better suited for this and Dean would end up asking inane questions in the background. But still. Thought that counts and all that.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Thanks.”

He considered adding something else. Something subtle and kind; something that didn’t scream _How did we get here, Cas? Where did we go_ wrong?

Instead he told Cas to have a good night. Then he hung up and imagined Cas setting the phone down, looking out the window idly, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, picking up the cat and carrying it into the living room where his notes had been set up.

The mental image soothed something inside Dean.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam sat sprawled in the front passenger seat, one foot planted on the pavement, the other hitched up on the lip of the car door. He had a map of Colorado spread across his lap and a pen spinning through his fingers. An insistent breeze kept pushing his hair into his eyes.

 Cas leaned against the Impala’s side and squinted up at the apartment complex.

“Did your brother bother packing anything before—“ Cas checked the time on his phone. “Fifteen minutes ago?”

“How come when he’s in trouble, he suddenly becomes ‘your brother’?” Sam asked, eyes still on the map. He traced a blue highway with the end of his pen, watched it sidle through Kansas and into Colorado.

“Did you give him the list of—“

“Cas.” Sam looked up and squinted through the early morning sunlight. “This is Dean.”

Cas seemed to take this into consideration then sighed and slumped against the Impala even more.

In the end, Dean appeared ten minutes later with a duffel bag swung over his shoulder and wearing a plaid button-up wherein the buttons had been mismatched.

“Yeah, I know, there’s a schedule, sorry.” Dean threw the duffel into the trunk. “I had to make sure there weren’t any valuables left lying around for Beavis and Butthead to nab.”

Cas glanced over to Sam for explanation.

“Subleasers. A pair of film students named Harry and Ed. They’re kind of…excitable.” Sam raised his voice slightly. “Though some people seem to think they’re going to destroy the apartment while we’re gone.”

“They wanted to scan the place for ghosts,” Dean said, slamming the trunk shut. “Ghosts. You should’ve seen them, Cas. With these…” he waved his hands vaguely. “Blinking pieces of shit. Don’t tell me that doesn’t set off a few alarms.”

“Then why are you letting them sublease?” Cas asked.

“It was them or the drug dealer,” Dean said resignedly.

“It’ll be fine, Dean. They’re harmless,” Sam assured him. He closed the Colorado map and swung his legs into the car.

“Mm,” Dean grunted, and glanced at the apartment one last time, like someone who didn’t want to bet that it’d be there when he got back.

“Well.” Cas clacked open the back door. “Shall we?”

Dean slid into the driver’s seat, Cas took his old spot in the backseat, and Sam swung his legs fully into the car.

“All right,” Dean said as he started the ignition. “Where we headed?”

Sam broke into a grin despite himself, because damn. They were really doing this. He actually had Dean and Cas in the same car, and it was just going to be the three of them for the next few weeks. It could either go horribly wrong or wonderfully right.

“All over the place, ultimately.” Cas leaned forward, so that his head hovered between the brothers’. “But today I thought we could make it to Pike National Forest.”

“Where’s that?” Dean asked.

“Middle of Colorado. Past Colorado Springs,” Sam told him.

Dean whistled and drove them through the parking lot.

“That’s a ways,” he said. “Might take what, ten hours?”

“Almost,” Cas agreed. “But the next few days we can meander. The goal is to get out of Kansas.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Dean barely glanced right and left before peeling out of the driveway. “Tell you what though, bet I can get us there in eight hours.”

“Dean, _don’t_ ,” Sam protested, right as Cas fell back into his seat and pointedly put on his seat belt.

But by then Dean had slipped in Led Zeppelin, and Sam knew that it would be another few hours before Dean got the speed demon out of his system. So he gave up on the idea of protesting, got more comfortable in his seat, opened up his map again, and lost himself in the expanses of possibilities that the colored patches and sharp blue lines offered.

***

They did not take the interstate, as Sam imagined they might have done. Instead Dean had asked to see the map (glancing between it and the road) and then proclaimed that they’d avoid traffic and take the scenic route. Which, in Sam’s experience, could mean anything from running out of gas in the middle of miles and miles of farmland to finding a tiny diner with the best damn sloppy joe he’d ever had. Within the space of three hours, no less.

Ultimately, they didn’t have any set itinerary, so Sam didn’t protest the idea. Cas vaguely said that he wasn’t the one driving, then settled back into staring intently out the window. Sam glanced out the window a few times as well, but all he found was predictable Kansas grassland.

Sometime around three hours after they left, Dean pulled over into a dusty gas station at Sam’s insistence and Dean’s accusation that Sam had the bladder of a Chihuahua.

When Sam emerged from the bathroom (slightly too small and smelling vaguely of urine, but far from the worst place Sam had taken a piss) he found Dean stocking up on road food and Cas ambling among the knick-knacks and cheap souvenirs; he paused and studied a rack of baseball caps.

“You should get that one,” Sam said as he approached Cas. He reached out, nabbed the cap that said “Shopping is Cheaper than Therapy,” and plopped it on Cas’ head. Cas glanced into the narrow mirror, gave Sam a “really?” expression, and grabbed a cap that read, “White Girl Wasted,” in pink rhinestones. Sam just barely managed to duck away, and attributed his success to his height. He bumped into a stand of postcards in the process, making it wobble dangerously.

“Hey!” Dean called from the front register. “Knock it off!”

Sam was suppressing giggles at this point, and Cas looked close to it.

“Yes, dad,” Cas called back. Sam snorted so hard his throat hurt.

Dean rolled his eyes and probably made some comment to the cashier about supposed adults acting like children.

Cas replaced both caps and then paused when his eyes fell on the stand of postcards Sam had nearly knocked over. Sam watched him reach out to spin it once, twice.

“Gonna send one to someone?” he asked.

“Hm?” Cas glanced up at him. “Oh. No. I just.” He plucked up something that turned out to not be a postcard but a vinyl bumper sticker. It was a generic one for Kansas, with an explosion of sunflowers in one corner and rolling grassland in the other. Cas studied it for a moment and then strode for the cash register with it still in his hand. Sam ambled behind.

Five minutes later, Dean’s food crammed around Sam’s feet, they were back to speeding down the sparsely populated US-400. Sam watched through the rearview mirror as Cas peeled the sticker from its backing, then carefully placed it on a blue Nalgene water bottle that looked brand new.

“What happened to your old water bottle?” Dean suddenly asked, causing both Sam and Cas to look at him. For several seconds Sam had no idea what Dean was talking about, until he recalled the battered green thing covered in faded, peeling stickers that had accompanied Cas on many a hiking trip.

“It’s started leaking.” Cas held up the bottle and studied his sticker’s placement. He lowered it and smiled up at them. “It’s fine. It’ll be fun to decorate this one.”

Dean didn’t look at ease with this.

“You’ve had that other one for forever,” he said. “Like, I don’t remember you _not_ having that bottle.”

Cas cocked his head.

“It was leaking,” he repeated after a long while, like he thought maybe Dean hadn’t caught it the first time. “As in, it was soaking my backpack’s contents.”

Dean pressed his lips together and edged the Impala faster. He seemed to have dropped the topic, because he didn’t retaliate. Sam side-eyed his brother then glanced back at Cas.

Cas studied the back of Dean’s head with an inscrutable expression. Sam wondered whether he understood all that. Sam had his suspicions.

***

Cas must have accepted at some point that Kansas and eastern Colorado were as flat as the proverbial pancake and would remain so for the rest of the day because when Sam woke up from a light doze, he glanced back to find Cas sprawled across the back seat, a paperback held up to his face. It doubled as a shade from the high noon sun.

“Watcha reading?” Sam asked as he nabbed a bag of pretzels and tore it open. Dean automatically held up a hand, and Sam dutifully gave him a handful.

“ _Basin and Range_.” Cas held up the book so Sam could see. “John McPhee. It’s a classic.”

Sam leaned over the seat and squinted at a cover with what looked like an oil painting of a mountain range.

“Pulitzer prize winner, huh?” Sam popped a few more pretzels into his mouth, then handed Dean another handful. “Never heard of it.”

“It’s from the ‘80s.” Cas shifted into more of a sitting position and he too held out a hand. Sam passed him the whole bag. “So it’s a bit dated by now, but it’s an excellent read.”

“Huh.” Sam rested his chin against the top of the seat. “What’s it about?”

Cas studied the book as he popped a pretzel in his mouth, as if he wasn’t sure what words to use.

“Geology,” he said after a moment.

Sam grinned. “Naturally.”

“Only…um. Not technical. Written for any average person to read. He does a good job of it.”

“Really?” Sam scrutinized the book with fresh interest. As much as he’d always done his best to understand Cas’ excited explanations of things like fault lines and orogenies, it never quite stuck. “Can I read it when you’re done?” Sam asked.

“I have two more chapters,” Cas said. “So probably by this afternoon, if you’d like.”

“Cool.” Sam accepted the pretzel bag Cas handed him, turned back around in his seat, paused, then realized that he was waiting for Dean to make some comment about how he had the misfortune to be dating one massive nerd and be related to another.

Only no. Not dating. Best friends.

Or? Were they still best friends? Were they friends at all? They had to be friends at least; Sam wasn’t sure how else to envision them.

Sam brushed the tangled mass of thoughts aside with a sharp exhale and scrunched the pretzel bag closed. He’d told himself a long time ago not to get bogged down in things like that. Didn’t do him an ounce of good. But despite himself, Sam did end up peering over at Dean.

The man was gazing out the windshield, humming along with AC/DC, and probably hadn’t registered a word either Sam or Cas had said. Or he’d registered everything and had made an executive decision not to react at all.

Sam slumped down in his seat, hiked his feet up so that his knees bumped at his chin, and silently watched old farmhouses and fields of soybean swish past them.

***

The storm came out of nowhere, as Great Plains storms were wont to do.

“Looks nasty,” Sam commented when it was still a fortress of black clouds in the near distance, hanging low enough that Sam imagined a tall building would reach it.

“Maybe we should pull over,” Cas said five minutes later, when the billow had engulfed them and become pounding rain. Dean didn’t reply and kept his eyes on the road, though Sam honestly didn’t understand how Dean saw anything through the sheet of rain and wildly swinging windshield wipers.

Ten minutes after that: “Dean!” Cas all but yelled to be heard over the clatter of rain and the rolls of thunder right over their heads. “Pull over right now; you’re going to kill all of us!”

“I’m not going to kill anyone!” Dean roared back, but three minutes later he swore vehemently and slowed them down. He bumped along the shoulder for a little while then inched to a stop and turned off the ignition.

“Thank you,” Cas said emphatically. “We should have done that ten minutes ago—“

“Don’t want to hear it, Cas,” Dean barked.

Sam remained silent and watched the rain fall like it had a personal vendetta against this particular corner of eastern Colorado. The Impala rocked violently in the wind.

“Do we need to worry about tornados?” Sam asked suddenly.

Dean sighed, pulled at his mouth, and turned the key so they could switch on the radio. He fiddled around with the control until they found a man telling them about flash flood warnings for a list of counties. But after several minutes of listening, they didn’t hear anything about tornados. Content on that front, Sam settled in for waiting the thing out.

A spear of lightning ripped apart the sky, and the subsequent thunder rattled Sam’s teeth.

“Remember that time?” he said. “At that park? We were in the middle of the forest and we got caught in a thunderstorm?” He glanced over at Dean and Cas. “We heard the tornado sirens and I thought we were going to die.”

The car was dim, but Sam could still make out Cas’ small smile.

“I got yelled at for taking us off-trail,” he said, glancing at Dean.

“Damn right you did,” Dean told the steering wheel. “What if someone had broken an ankle, huh? Looking for fucking…whatever it was.”

“Trilobites,” Cas told him. “I’d heard there were trilobite fossils in the area.”

“And who told you that?”

“Someone online.”

Dean snorted, and Cas retreated into his seat; his smile had dripped away. Sam wondered if he should have kept his big mouth shut. If it would be better, this whole trip, to abstain from the “remember when”s. Because apparently all _that_ did was make Dean bitchy and Cas inscrutable. Or vise versa.

They sat in stony silence for another ten minutes before the rain began to lighten up. The thunder finally began to lag behind the lightning and the clouds lost some of their unforgiving thickness.

There came a point, just before Dean announced they were good to go, when the sky looked terrifying and beautiful all at once. Its clouds came in purple-black-gray towers and billows, churning above them in a way that made Sam feel like he understood the people who’d worshipped rain gods. It didn’t look like anything remotely comforting, yet Sam had a hard time looking away. It was, he knew, something that could kill him without trying. On impulse, he pulled out his phone and snapped several pictures.

As Dean pulled back onto the road, Sam found himself reviewing his photos and wishing he could send these to someone. A kind of “I just experienced something cool and I want to share that with you.” Except the two people most likely to receive such a photo had just experienced the storm firsthand, and besides, both were emanating a forbidding energy.

Ruby…well, that wasn’t going to work for multiple reasons. Same with the rest of his group of friends. Group of former friends.

Sam scrolled through his list of contacts and experienced a rising urge to laugh, though not in a good way. High school friends he’d lost contact with. College friends he didn’t talk to anymore. Acquaintances who wouldn’t understand why that tall kid they’d met a few times was sending them photos of a stormy sky. His old boss. Phone numbers with no names.

God, this was sad.

Then Sam found a name that hadn’t been in his phone until recently. Tran, Kevin.

Sam studied the name, bit his lip, then jumped the gun and sent a text that took nearly fifteen minutes to create and involved a lot of backspacing and rewriting.

[Sam] _Hi Kevin, hope your summer’s going well so far. I’m currently in the middle of Colorado; we’re taking a road trip. Just survived a massive storm. Check out these pictures!_

(The exclamation point had taken deliberation. In the end, Sam had gone with it because it added some levity. Shut up, there was an art to texting; ask anyone.)

Sam added three of his favorite pictures and, after a brief contemplation that this was stupid and Sam was pathetic, hit send. He immediately stuffed the phone into his pocket and hunched against the window. Kevin was probably busy with an actual job, Sam mused as he watched a fence whizz past. He’d find the text in an hour and then not bother answering until tonight, if he even answered at all. They’d become friendly at work, sure, but that hardly meant—

Sam’s phone buzzed. Sam, very carefully, did not react immediately. He slowly fished it out and studied the screen that told him he had a text from Kevin Tran.

And that was…well. Nice for one. Mildly unexpected for another.

[Kevin] _Hi Sam! Man, you’ve made me jealous now. I’m in the middle of my third coffee run of the day; much rather be road tripping. Who are you with? Where are you going?_

Sam grinned down at this phone and tapped out a response.

[Sam] _Coffee runs? Sounds like an internship. In which case congrats, but sorry it’s the kind where you have to be the boss’ gopher. I’m with my brother and a friend of ours. We’re doing a tour of the Western U.S. I think the plan is to be out here all summer._

The phone buzzed again after less than a minute.

[Kevin] _Yup, internship it is. I’m working in Kansas State Senator Crowley’s office this summer. It’s a fantastic opportunity but a lot of work. He’s not that nice but he’s wicked smart. I’ve already learned a lot. But spending all summer out west? Lucky!! Hope the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone are on the list._

[Sam] _Definitely. Cas (that’s my friend) is a geology masters student so he’s really the one planning everything. I can keep you updated with pictures as we go along._

[Kevin] _Sounds great. I can reciprocate, though my pictures will mostly be of office buildings._

A second later.

[Kevin] _Here’s the first one._

Below that, Sam found a picture of Kevin grinning and brandishing a tray of Starbucks. He looked like he was wearing a pressed suit and tie, which was exactly what Sam would have expected from someone who wanted to be the first Asian American president.

Sam exhaled a laugh.

“Who you talking to?” Dean asked.

“A friend of mine,” Sam told him. He could feel Dean watching him, and looked at his brother properly. “Just someone from the tutoring center. Kevin Tran?”

Dean nodded once and seemed to relax. Not that Sam could blame him. Didn’t stop the stab of embarrassment though.

***

Sometimes Cas wondered why he’d decided to study in the middle of Kansas when he knew for a fact that he loved mountains. He loved the places where the earth ripped in half and buckled up on itself. Where rock from millions of years ago rose in front of him and made him remember just how insignificant his lifetime was in the larger timescale of the earth.

(He knew the answer, of course. It started with “W” and ended with “inshesters.”)

Not to say Lawrence, Kansas wasn’t a nice place. And one could find fossils and some interesting features if one was willing to drive for a few hours. But any mountain ranges Kansas might have boasted had eroded away millions of years ago, so Cas didn’t think he could be entirely blamed for practically leaning out of the window at the first hint of elevated terrain.

“Yes, you can be blamed!” Dean snapped. “You’re going to fall out, Cas!”

“I’m not,” Cas told him serenely, eyes fixed on the distant outlines of the Rocky Mountains.

Sam was laughing, Cas could tell, and that honestly just made Cas want to hang out the window as long as he could. Sam didn’t laugh these days as much as he used to.

“Someone hand me my camera,” Cas called out.

“We’re not going to encourage you,” Dean told him. Castiel ducked inside the car and started rifling through his backpack.

“We’re going to be hanging out around mountains all summer,” Dean continued.

“Yes, but this is the first sighting,” Cas told him. He pulled out his camera and his field book with a triumphant sound. “It’s worth recording.”

Cas couldn’t see Dean’s face, but he was willing to bet that Dean was rolling his eyes right now and had on that mixed expression of exasperation and fondness. Well. Maybe more exasperation and less fondness in this situation.

Cas made a note in his field book (“June 3, 2014. 5:37 p.m. Near Pueblo, CO. U.S. 50. First sighting of mountains.” He underlined “mountains” three times for good measure). He then took several pictures and ignored Dean telling him that these were practically dark smudges on the horizon. It was the principle of the matter; Cas thought he had made that clear.

Even when he’d put the camera away, Cas kept his face against the window and watched the dark smudges turn into solid shapes. At that point, though, the sun finally dipped behind the horizon, and Cas had to make do with curling up in the backseat and grinning madly to himself. He didn’t care how juvenile he looked at the moment; this was his passion. He’d enjoy it as much as he liked.

***

In spite of Dean’s flagrant disregard for the speed limit signs they occasionally whipped past, it was fully nighttime by the time they rolled into Pike National Forest. It took another half hour of driving and getting mildly lost before they reached the campsite and paid the sleepy-looking ranger at the check-in cabin.

Cas was just glad that he’d made a reservation because every campsite they rolled past looked to be full. RVs took up the first few sites, several of them blithely lit up with strings of lights and, on not one but two occasions, plastic flamingoes.

Cas knew that if Meg were here, she’d make a scathing comment about people who liked to pretend they were camping while they still had generators and running water. Then again, this was the same Meg who regularly hiked into deep wilderness by herself and had climbed Mount Rainier even after spraining her ankle three fourths of the way up and was notorious for ignoring maps and field guides.

(Chuck had officially banned Meg from leading field trips after she ditched the itinerary and led her class of hapless undergrads deep into national forestland because “That itinerary was a load of hack. I was supposed to show them good fluvial deposits, and I’d carve my own kidney out with a dull spoon if the shit Chuck wanted me to show them had ever so much as heard of a river.”)

Meg, Cas had decided recently, was not truly happy unless she was out in the middle of nowhere, rock hammer in one hand, Brunton compass in the other, and no chance of a cell phone signal in case things went downhill.

Dean called it hard evidence that she was a banshee. Cas found it kind of hot. Sam didn’t completely agree one way or another, and didn’t seem to mind sitting in the graduate office while Cas graded and Meg ranted to Sam about how bullshit writing grants was.

“What number are we?” Dean asked in the tone of someone who had asked the same thing twice and was getting impatient now.

“What?” Cas jerked his head up and then looked down at the papers he’d accepted from the ranger. “Um, site 35.”

“We passed that already,” Dean told him, and Cas felt his stomach drop. Dean sounded dead tired. Sam murmured something to his brother, but Cas didn’t quite catch it. They did find site 35 eventually. A small patch of soil shaded by two trees and littered with dry leaves.

They clacked out of the car with loud groans and long stretches. The air was not exactly cold, but it did prompt Cas to root out a sweater. Two sites away, a large group chattered around a roaring fire.

“Hope they don’t keep that up all night,” Dean grunted as he popped open the trunk.

“Quiet hours aren’t for another two hours,” Cas told him. “We can ask them to quiet down then.” He peered into the trunk to gauge what they’d need.

“So,” Dean said, hands on his hips. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what’re the sleeping arrangements? ‘Cause if you brought that two-person sleeping bag, I’m just going to sleep in the car so I don’t have to watch you and Sam spoon.”

Cas looked up at him sharply. He knew this version of Dean. This version was tired and more than a little cranky and prone to saying things with a special kind of bluntness. Wherein “special” meant “insensitive as all get out.”

Cas looked around for Sam and found him in the middle of the site with a flashlight, clearing out sticks and stones. Maybe he knew to stay out of Dean’s way, especially with Cas in close proximity. Maybe he just wanted to be helpful. Knowing Sam, it was both.

But in any case, Sam wouldn’t be helping him out with any Dean-taming here, so Cas turned back to the man in question.

“I brought three single sleeping bags,” he said. “And one four-person tent and one one-person tent. Which I figured should let us avoid each another anytime we need to, though I admit I’d hoped to not need that until a week or two in.”

Dean’s expression fell.

 _What?_ Cas wanted to ask acidly. _You think I didn’t realize we’d have friction? I’m not emotionally illiterate, Dean, no matter how many times you like to say it. Good god, we’ve hardly had a proper conversation within the last year and now we’re sharing the same space for a whole summer. Of course I planned for things to go south. Guess what? I even have a plan for if we need to split ways in the middle of this thing because—_

Here Cas had to stop his mental diatribe because it was going places Cas didn’t want it to go and because silently glaring at Dean for too long wasn’t going to help anything.

“Anyway.” Cas straightened and nodded to the trunk. “I thought it’d be easier if we set up the four-person and call it a night.”

Dean was still watching him with too open an expression, and Cas had to bend down and give a lot of attention to finding the tent so he could avoid it. It wasn’t fair when Dean got that lost little boy look. It had an odd consequence. On the one hand, it made something inside Cas want to scoop the man closer and made dumb promises, the kind that he’d tell children who needed to hear such assurances because otherwise the world was too big and potentially crushing. The kinds of things Dean had not heard enough of as a child.

But experience had taught Cas that giving Dean such attentions was a tricky business. No doubt that the man wanted them at some level. He starved for them; Cas had realized that a long time ago. No, the trick came in whether Dean would be willing to acknowledge that he wanted it. Whether he’d accept Cas’ ministrations with grace or get ashamed of himself and explode like a bomb full of so much shrapnel. Cas knew that he couldn’t really blame Dean. Lesser people would have emerged from a mother’s death and a father’s abuse with far more problems. Still, the fact remained that Cas had been caught in the shrapnel too many times. These days, that lost little boy expression made Cas gun-shy, and that made him downright nasty.

“Cas—“

Cas hauled the tent out. He resolutely did not look at Dean. He walked over to Sam and dumped the tent on the leaf litter. Like the action had flicked a switch inside him, the gun-shy nastiness lost to the desire to protect, and Cas abruptly felt like a complete and utter shitbag.

Complete and utter shitbags did not deserve the worried look Sam gave him.

“Is, um…” Sam closed his mouth, and Cas could guess his thought process. Sam wanted to ask if things were all right even when they were very obviously not all right, and now felt stupid for saying anything at all.

“Things will be better when we haven’t been stuck in a car for nine hours,” Cas told him, and tried to add a smile. He didn’t think it came out so well.

“Right.” Sam tried to smile back and failed at least half as badly.

“Here,” Cas said, unzipping the tent bag, “let’s get this set up.”

Wordlessly, Dean got the camp stove fired up on the picnic bench while Sam and Cas only struggled mildly with the tent. By the time they’d tossed the sleeping bags and mats inside, the smell of something greasy and meaty filled their site.

Burgers. Naturally. Dean had automatically grabbed them when they’d stopped by the local grocery store two hours ago because “duh, camping, of course you grill meat.” But also because Dean made some of the best burgers Cas had ever tasted (and Cas considered himself something of a connoisseur of burgers).

It was… _used_ to be their thing. Maybe not romantic in the most classic sense of the word—Charlie teased them mercilessly for it and liked to ask whether bratwursts meant something else, at which point Cas would start coughing and Dean would roll his eyes—but it was _theirs._ Congratulations burgers. Thank you burgers I’m-just-really-glad-you’re-here burgers. It’s-going-to-be-okay burgers.

Apology burgers.

And when Dean handed Cas a cheap bun and an expertly cooked patty (expertly cooked because Dean had insisted on bringing his stash of spices from home because, quote unquote, camping doesn’t mean we have to eat like Neanderthals), Cas very, very stupidly tried to gauge whether there was something more to the way Dean told him “Be careful, it’s hot.” A secret message in the combination of spices and grease, in the charred stripes from the grill. Whether this ritual of theirs, this act of one of them creating sustenance and the other accepting it, had an extra dimension of “I love you” and “I’m sorry” to it. Cas used to be able to tell so easily.

He couldn’t tell at all now. He wasn’t sure whether it meant he was becoming illiterate in the Dean-and-Cas language or Dean wasn’t saying anything in the first place.

Probably the latter.

It made Cas more depressed than he thought was entirely reasonable.

***

They’d agreed, however curtly, to let themselves sleep in the next morning. Cas woke up to find mid-morning sunlight pouring in through the mesh of their tent. Dean’s sleeping bag was empty. Sam sat next to Cas and smiled at something on his phone.

Cas shifted slightly, and Sam looked down at him.

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Mm. Time izzit?” Cas asked.

“8:30,” Sam told him, stowing his phone away.

“Early.”

“For you.” Sam laughed and reached for his pants, tugging them on over his boxers. “I think Dean was up by 7.”

Cas hummed his due amazement.

“Anyway.” Sam went into a crouch. “Breakfast is whatever you can scrounge up, according to Dean.”

Cas didn’t respond. Sam hesitated, then reached out and ruffled Cas’ hair, making it stick up even worse than usual.

“Stoooop.” Cas buried his face into his sleeping bag.

“C’mon.” Sam patted his shoulder, then unzipped the tent door. “New day. The past is the past and we live in the present. Stuff like that.” He was grinning; Cas could tell.

Usually Cas was grateful for Sam’s cheerfulness. Sometimes it was deeply annoying.

When Cas did finally stumble from the tent, Sam was nowhere to be seen and Dean stood in front of a respectable little fire.

Which was a problem. For several reasons. Cas conjured a list.

 

Castiel’s List of Reasons This Scene Is a Problem:

  1.      Dean’s hair is unkempt.
  2.      He has a definite shadow around his jaw that will very likely become a beard within a week.
  3.      He has red cheeks and a red nose and is dressed in the forest green sweater that brings out his eyes. He also produces a plume of vapor every time he breathes out.
  4.      He has one hand jammed in his jeans pocket, the other holding a tin cup, and he watches the fire pensively, like the handsome star in an indie movie about men going into the wilderness to find themselves.
  5.      As an obvious result sleep deprivation, Cas wishes it were acceptable to stride over and give Dean a peck on his chapped lips. Just a little one. Between friends.



 

Dean lifted his head suddenly and they ended up eying one another warily for a solid five seconds.

“Did you make that?” Cas asked—perhaps a little stupidly—and gestured at the fire. Dean dropped his eyes to the fire, lifted his eyebrows, then looked up at Cas again.

“This might surprise you,” he said, “but all those camping trips you dragged me to did end up teaching me something.”

“Oh.” Cas nodded. “Well. Good.”

Dean might have rolled his eyes at that point. Cas couldn’t tell; it was subtle.

“Here.” Dean turned and set his tin cup on the picnic table. He grabbed a blue one, brought it to the fire, and plucked a coffee pot from where it hung just above the flames. Cas watched blankly as Dean filled him a cup of fresh, black coffee and handed it over.

 

  1.      Dean has just given him a cup of hot coffee. Which more or less seals the deal. This is a massive problem.



 

“Thanks,” Cas said, and took a tentative sip.

“There’s um, there’s food in the car,” Dean said, gesturing toward the Impala. “I figure we can stick together whatever.”

“Sure.” Cas nodded. He remained where he was for several seconds too long. He realized this abruptly. He made a sudden beeline for the Impala.

 _Confusing_ , was what Castiel thought as he rummaged through the cooler that sat in the foot well behind the driver’s seat. He and Dean had kept up this stately waltz of proper distance and small talk for the past year. Only now the music had twisted into something new, and both Cas and Dean had launched into steps that bore some resemblance to their old dance but were mostly just _confusing._

Cas was mulling over this sad truth of things while eating a slice of bread smeared with peanut butter when Sam returned from somewhere down the road.

“Bathrooms that way,” he said, jerking his thumb behind him as he approached Cas. “Ohh, peanut butter. Good idea.”

“I forgot to get honey,” Cas realized out loud as Sam dived into the cooler.

Sam glanced back and released a mock long-suffering sigh.

“Cas,” he said solemnly. “I don’t believe this. You are fired as trip organizer. Pack your things.”

“No, don’t,” Cas pleaded, grinning despite himself. “I have five children. How will I send them to school?”

From the fire, Dean snorted.

“You can’t handle _one_ child,” he said.

“Says who?”

“You remember babysitting Jo?”

A pause.

“I was in middle school,” Cas protested.

“So was I.” Dean gave Cas a shit-eating grin. “Yet, somehow, _I_ never lost her.”

“It’s _Jo_ ,” Cas tried.

Dean shrugged and took another sip of his coffee.

“So,” Sam said around a mouthful of peanut butter. “What’s the plan today?”

Cas turned away from Dean with a small huff. “Well, there are some good hikes in

the national forest. We could find one that looks feasible within a few hours.”

“Sure.” Sam bobbed his head. “Dean? Sound good?”

“I’m tagging along here,” Dean said as he studied his coffee. “Whatever you guys decide is fine for me.”

Sam frowned slightly, then seemed to tell himself to dismiss it and instead looked at Cas.

“I’ll get the maps.”

***

They ended up choosing a trail that wound around the top of the national forest. They headed for the trailhead after packing up.

“So,” Sam said, and twisted around in his seat so he could see Cas. “What’s the geology around here?”

“…In general?” Cas ventured.

“Sure. I want to know.”

Dean should have been making a comment about nerds here. He didn’t.

“Um.” Cas rubbed at his chin. “Okay, here.” He grabbed his field book and flipped it open to a blank page. He leaned forward and rested it on the top of the bench seat.

“I haven’t done any real research on this area,” he said as his pencil hovered over the paper. “But in the Precambrian—you know the Precambrian?”

“A long ass time ago,” Dean said dutifully.

“A couple billion years ago,” Cas amended. “That was probably a time of mountain building. Called an orogeny.” A pause. “And by the way—” he shot a look up to Sam. “—I do know what ‘orogeny’ sounds like.”

“I never said a word.” Sam tilted his head innocently, then asked, “Was that the Rockies?”

“Oh, no, these mountains eroded away a long time ago.” Cas sketched some pointy edges, then scribbled them out. It was an interpretive thing. “After they’d been eroded, we get a period from the Cambrian to the Mississippian when this area saw an intercontinental ocean. The coast would have shifted over time, and that deposited limestones and shales.” He scribbled something like an ocean and a fish. He glanced up at Sam. “You following this at all?” he asked.

Sam nodded. “Mountains and then an ocean.”

“So then we have another set of mountains,” Cas continued, drawing more points, “called the Ancestral Rockies. They would have been like island chains in this ocean. Those start eroding away too. Then into the Mesozoic—that’s the dinosaurs—the climate starts shifting and you get some marshes and floodplains and some deserts, depending on where you are.

“Then we get to the end of the dinosaurs and that’s when the Laramide Orogeny builds the modern Rockies.

“And then, well, a lot more erosion and more mountain building events—orogenies—and some of the faults and volcanoes form and…” Cas frowned down at the mess of scribbles in his notebook. “Well, that’s the broadest of broad overviews.”

Sam nodded. “It’s cool.”

The nice part, Cas considered, was that he knew Sam was being earnest. Sam usually pretended to understand more than he actually did, but that didn’t diminish his enthusiasm.

Cas ought to tell Sam that. Cas needed to tell Sam a lot of things. Sometimes Cas couldn’t help but wonder that if he’d been paying more attention, if he’d been giving Sam more support, then the thing with Ruby…well.

Cas had a lot of “what if?”s in his life at this point, that was all. He was getting a little tired of them.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean started to fall behind. Again.

“You okay?” Sam called back for the sixth or seventh time.

“Yup!” Dean lied.

He was categorically not fine. He’d stopped being fine about two hours ago. Sam probably knew this because the kid was always too observant for his own good even without the benefit of growing up with Dean. Still, Dean plastered on his “Everything’s great! See how great everything is?” smile. Even if Sam tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. Because what was Dean going to do? Announce that he was pretty sure he’d popped all the blisters he’d developed over the last few days and could hardly walk? That his lower back now had a permanent knot that didn’t ever go away? Complaining wasn’t going to do an ounce of good. They were in the middle of a looping trail that had no other outlets besides the parking lot, and the nearest semblance of civilization lay a good three hours in either direction.

But apparently Sam didn’t think about any of this because he called something out to Cas, who had disappeared up the trail. Then he jogged down the hill and wasn’t even breathing hard when he approached Dean. Damn health nut.

“What’s up?” Sam asked.

“Nothing,” Dean told him. “Just not as fast as you guys.”

“Uh huh.” Sam gestured with his walking stick. “Knees hurting?”

“I’m only in my 20s, you know.”

“Enough water?”

“Sam—“

“Blisters?”

“No.”

Dean tried to say it dismissively and knew that he’d immediately failed.

“Geeze Dean, really?” Sam looked truly concerned now. “How bad?”

“Um.” Dean looked down at his tattered, cheap boots. “A lot of them. Probably all popped by now.” Jesus, he was pathetic.

“Why haven’t you said anything?” Sam demanded.

“You guys haven’t been having any issues,” Dean’s voice came out in a hiss. “Didn’t want…” he trailed off because saying “look like the wuss of the group” sounded like something he’d have said in fifth grade. Sam puttered his lips loudly and tilted his head back.

“Dean. Cas practically has hobbit feet with all the hiking he’s done, and I have a blister kit, which I’d have lent to you if you’d said _anything_.” Sam looked like he was getting himself into a proper frenzy now, and soon Cas would come looking for them, and Dean really did not need two people fussing about the state of his feet.

(Though Cas might not fuss. Dean had no fucking clue anymore when it came to Cas.)

“Hey, listen.” Dean placed a hand on Sam’s arm. “They way I figure it, there’s nothing to do. We’re in the middle of nowhere; all I can do is bull through the pain.”

“We can go slower, though,” Sam said. “Let me find Cas and—“

“No.”

“Dean—“

“Sam. No.”

“ _Why_?” Sam’s grip on his walking stick tightened. “Why can’t Cas know, huh? You know, there’s only so much of you guys acting like hormonal teenagers that I can handle. Technically speaking, _I_ have the most right to act like the hormonal teenager, not the two dudes in their late twenties.”

“Yeah, yeah, cry me a river, Sam.” Dean strode past his brother and tried not to wince. He was pretty sure his feet were bleeding at this point.

Sam made an indistinguishable grumble behind him and followed. It took Dean about twenty paces to realize that Sam had shortened his stride to stay even with Dean. Dean wanted to be annoyed by this but instead felt grateful. He showed his gratitude by not mentioning anything. Sam would decipher it correctly.

At least, Dean mused as he gritted his teeth through a particularly rocky few steps, it felt like he and Sam were still on the same page, like they still knew how to look one another in the eye and speak the same language. Couldn’t say that for Cas. The last few days had pretty much solidified that.

It was, Dean thought, like those awful months right before they broke up, only more so. In those months, he and Cas were never on the same page, got frustrated, shot words that always hurt more than either would have liked to admit. Back then, he and Cas hadn’t quite accepted that they were going downhill, had clung to the good days as evidence that they’d be fine and tried to dismiss the bad days as flukes. Except then the bad days started outnumbering the good ones. The point when it all came crashing down around their ears—well. Dean figured that the title of “worst night in his life” could only be topped by the evening when his mother died in that house fire.

This time, he and Cas knew what to expect, at least. It wasn’t a surprise anymore and they weren’t trying to pretend that everything was hunky dory. That probably counted for something.

Cas was waiting for them when they rounded a bend in the trail. He squinted. Probably not wearing his contacts.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“We need to go a little slower,” Sam said. Dean was about to open his mouth when Sam continued, “My knees are starting to hurt.”

Cas looked between Sam and Dean, and then nodded.

“Yell at me if I’m getting too far ahead,” he said.

Dean shot Sam a look as they followed. Sam kept his eyes ahead of him.

As they tramped along the narrow trail, Dean found himself thinking that if his feet weren’t currently on fire, he’d be able to properly enjoy the scenery. They were still in central Colorado, though they’d ambled over to the Arapho National Forest by this point. And yeah, of course it had been an amazing five days of travel. Colorado was a beautiful state, with its mountain peaks and hills covered in thick pines. Even if Dean didn’t understand the rocks like Cas did, he didn’t usually mind pulling over so Cas could take pictures or collect samples because he enjoyed the chance to really study the scenery without worrying about driving at the same time. Dean knew that Cas had already found several interesting formations along this trail, and that Sam had smiled too many times to count. So really, how could Dean possibly complain?

Still. Two hours later, Dean’s attention remained wholly focused on his feet and maneuvering them so that they didn’t hurt any more than necessary. Sam kept shooting him worried looks. If Cas hadn’t suspected something earlier, he did now. He didn’t say anything though, and Dean was duly grateful.

When they finally reached the parking lot, Dean nearly cried at the sight of Baby. Sam offered to drive them to the campsite and Dean didn’t even protest.

Which probably explained why, when they got to the campsite and Dean sat down on the picnic table to peel off his shoes, he found Cas standing in front of him. Dean peered up and found that familiar wrinkle of the nose.

“What?” Dean asked.

“You never said anything.”

“About what?”

“Blisters. Sam said it was blisters.”

For fuck’s sake.

“It’s not that bad,” Dean recited.

Cas wordlessly knelt in front of Dean and began picking apart the knot on his left boot. Dean stared down at Cas’ nest of dark hair and then looked around for help. Sam, of course, was already halfway down the road to the water pump, all their water bottles in hand. Dean could see Cas’ new blue Nalgene, even at this distance. It still only had the Kansas bumper sticker.

“Uh.” Dean looked down at Cas, who had undone the knot and was starting to ease the boot off. “You don’t have to—oh fuck.”

Cas froze and looked up at Dean.

“No, no just—“ Dean waved a vague hand. “Like a Band-Aid.”

“If you say so,” Cas said, then slipped the boot off in one smooth motion. Dean inhaled through gritted teeth.

“Oh, Dean,” Cas murmured, and he really had too much gentleness in his words. Cas wasn’t allowed to do that; it threw everything off step.

“What? Oh.” Dean’s white cotton socks were stained red and yellow. He could pick out where the pus had seeped through and dried, hard and stiff.

“Maybe we should leave the sock on,” he tried to joke.

“These can get infected,” Cas said in a much more serious tone. “They might already be infected. How many days have you had these?”

“Since that first hike.”

“ _Dean_ ,” Cas looked up at him, and his face was a mix of annoyance, fright, and incredulousness. “You can’t—“ Cas seemed to remind himself of something, because he cut himself off and heaved to a stand. “Don’t move,” he ordered. “I have a first aid kit.”

Dean studied his sock as Cas rooted through the car. Yeah, he’d be the first to admit that he was a grade A idiot for not taking care of this. That the reasons he’d ignored it were stupid. And this whole trip was turning into a hot mess.

Cas returned with a tin box and reassumed his position in front of Dean.

“All right,” he said, gripping the edges of Dean’s dusty socks. “This is going to hurt.”

“Just one quick—ohgodohgodohgod!” Dean jerked his foot back and succeeded in clipping Cas’ chin with his knee in the process. “Shit,” Dean rasped at the situation in general. “Cas, you okay? Jesus, I’m sorry.”

“Fine,” Cas grunted, rubbing his chin. He tossed the sock in the dirt beside him and made a face at Dean’s foot. Which was fair. Dean was making a face too. He also had an urge to gag, which Cas didn’t do, to his credit.

It was a mess. The blisters had definitely all popped, and several had started bleeding. Yet Cas reached for the first aid kit like he actually planned on touching all that.

“Cas.” Dean shifted to try and grab at the kit. “It’s disgusting; let me do it.”

“I don’t mind—“

“Yeah well I’d rather do it myself.” Dean snatched up the kit. “You can put together dinner instead, all right?”

Cas looked ready to protest; instead he just sighed and straightened.

“We’re not hiking tomorrow,” he told Dean.

Dean tried to decide whether to tell Cas he could handle it or to exhale with relief. He settled for shrugging with one shoulder.

“Your call,” he said. Cas muttered something about idiotic martyrs and crunched over to the Impala.

Dean was left with little notion of whether Cas was mad at him.

***

The next morning, after they had packed up and were getting ready to leave, Cas announced that they were going to stop in a nearby town and pick up some supplies.

“Really?” Dean half smiled. “In an actual building, you mean? With climate control? Dunno, Cas, we might need some time to adjust.”

“I need to pick up some things,” Cas repeated. “I’ll direct you.”

“You want to sit up front, then?” Dean asked.

Cas shrugged slightly. “If Sam doesn’t mind.”

“Hey, Sam!” Dean called over to his brother, who was perched on the picnic table and tapping away at his phone. “Mind if Cas takes shotgun today?”

“Yeah,” Sam called back without bothering to look up. Dean grunted.

“Been on his phone all morning,” he said, mostly to himself.

“He’s texting his friend from work,” Cas told him in an undertone. Amazingly, his tone and expression had made a complete 180 within that one sentence. Now he reminded Dean of soccer moms slyly announcing that little Cindy had met a _boy._

“How d’you know?” Dean asked, and was momentarily ashamed that he had the exact same tone to him. When it came to Sam, though, he probably had more in common with the soccer moms than he’d have readily admitted.

“I mean, anytime you or I ask him about it, it’s Kevin Tran this and Kevin Tran that.” Cas’s mouth curled into a grin. “And you’ve noticed how he keeps taking pictures?”

“ _You_ keep taking pictures.”

Cas ignored him. “He’s sending them to Kevin. I think Kevin sends some back.

Dean considered this.

“I think you’ve been spying on my little brother,” he said.

Cas waved his hand.

“I just catch snatches. I’m not _trying_.”

Dean hummed and glanced over at his brother again. Sam had set down the phone and picked up that mountain book Cas had been reading the first day in the car. Dean squinted. _Basin and Range_. That was it.

Dean looked back at Cas. “Well, apparently this Kevin kid wants to be president, so if Sam can nab himself a position as First Gentleman, I’m cool with it.”

Cas laughed. A rich, real laugh. Dean couldn’t have pinpointed when he last elicited a sound like that from Cas.

“You guys talking about me?” Sam suddenly asked. Cas had to cough out a second laugh.

“Sam.” Dean swung open the Impala’s door and couldn’t quite smother his grin. “Don’t worry, we’ve got better things to do than gossip about you.”

A bald faced lie, but that had never stopped Bobby and Ellen telling Dean and Sam the same thing all these years.

Sam hopped off the table and strode for the car. He did have a little spring in his step, Dean decided. And hey, this wasn’t Ruby or any of those other kids. As far as Dean was concerned, Kevin was something of a godsend right now.

The drive to the town had a little kick to it, Dean decided. Maybe because Dean had made Cas laugh. Maybe because Sam’s phone kept buzzing and he kept grinning down at it like it was his own miniature sun. Maybe because the view was goddamn gorgeous, like something out of a postcard. Pick one of them. Pick all of them. In the end, it amounted to Dean cruising into town feeling like today might go well for once.

“Turn right here,” Cas instructed, looking between the street signs and his map every few seconds. They left the main road and found themselves on a service road that ran along a small strip mall.

Cas suddenly pointed. “Park here.”

Dean did so, then peered at what the strip mall had to offer. Probably not the tanning salon—they were taking care of that all by themselves—and it was a little early for the Chinese buffet, so—

“We need more camping gear?” Dean asked Cas, nodding to the outdoor supplies store. “Thought we were good.”

“Just a few small things I forgot,” Cas said airily as he climbed out of the Impala. “Come on, the faster we finish this the better.”

Dean followed suite much more slowly; you didn’t date a guy for eight years without starting to recognize some of his tells. Dean’s sneaking suspicion turned into outright realization when Cas steered them to the back of the store.

“No,” he said as soon as he caught sight of the wall of hiking boots.

Cas closed his eyes briefly.

“Did you or did you not see your feet yesterday?” he asked in a low, no-nonsense voice, probably so the lady stocking hiking socks a few feet away wouldn’t hear. “And did you or did you not just hobble all the way from the car?”

Dean thought that “hobble” was a strong term. “Limp slightly” was probably more accurate. Dean pointed this out, and Cas rubbed at his face. Sam, meanwhile, made no pretense of ignoring their hushed argument.

“ _Dean_ ,” Sam cut in before Cas could form a rebuttal. “Shut up. Buy the damn hiking boots.”

“What’s wrong with these boots?” Dean protested. He shouldn’t have said that, actually, because all it did was make the three of them glance down at Dean’s feet.

In Dean’s defense, he’d bought these boots for ten dollars at Goodwill, and they’d lasted three years of Cas’ hiking trips. Sure, they were tattered and starting to develop toe-sized holes, but they’d had a good run.

Cas, it turned out, was not convinced, and gripped Dean’s wrist to yank him toward the display of new hiking boots. The contact sent a zing up Dean’s arm.

“They smell like a cesspool,” Cas said.

“God’s sake, they do not,” Dean snapped. Cas still had a hand around his wrist. It was distracting.

“Do too,” Sam piped up. Dean glared at him.

“I don’t have extra cash,” Dean added.

“It’s my late birthday gift to you,” Cas deadpanned.

“More of a half-birthday gift at this point,” Sam mused.

“A half-birthday gift,” Cas agreed. He shoved Dean onto a small stool, and the zinging stopped. “Let me. Please.”

Dean surveyed Cas’ face and tried to decide whether this was a matter of Cas not wanting future hikes ruined by Dean’s feet or something like what they had in the old days.

Cas was a gifter; Dean had found out a long time ago. Back when he’d been the new kid in fourth grade, skinny, blue-eyed Cas had given Dean his sandwich several times a week because Dean more often than not showed up with no lunch and no lunch money. (The lunch money went to Sammy.) It got to the point that Cas asked his sister to make him two sandwiches every day, and Anna would later say that she assumed Cas had found a stray dog and was feeding it his food. Then she’d joke that she hadn’t been too far off the mark.

When they’d started dating in high school, Dean regularly found small gifts in his locker or on the Impala’s front seat. Candy or a pack of index cards when Dean had run out of them or interesting rocks or just notes that were sappy as hell, but still made it into the old shoebox Dean kept under his bed. Sometimes it was bigger stuff, like helping Dean pay the rent or getting him a new coat.

Once, Dean had told Cas that he worried sometimes, because he just didn’t have the money or the time or the intuitiveness to offer Cas any gifts back. Cas had kissed the side of his neck.

“That’s not your thing,” he’d said.

“What?”

“I like giving gifts. You have other ways to tell me that you care.”

Cas had said this with such sincerity, like Dean cooking him dinners and giving him back rubs balanced out Cas helping the Winchesters pay to have water that month. It never quite squashed Dean’s sense that Cas was doing too much providing in their relationship while Dean was doing far, far too much taking.

Now, as Dean watched Cas investigate the selection of hiking boots, he found himself viciously wishing he had enough money to tell Cas to leave it, that Dean could take care of himself. Only he couldn’t. Because he was a fucking unemployed mechanic from Kansas with a GED, a nice car, and not much else. Dean didn’t have to take this. He didn’t have to sit here and be humiliated as Cas did his _gifting_ schtick (or maybe not, maybe the guy was just being practical. It didn’t matter). He’d soldier through the blisters. He’d use Sam’s blister pack. He’d stop being the charity case—

“Dean.” Sam sat heavily next to him, snapping Dean out of his self-righteous funk. “Can you stop?”

Sam sounded weary. Bone weary. Which, considering his cheerful attitude ten minutes ago, made Dean take notice.

“What?” Dean blinked.

“It’s just…” Sam inhaled. “You’ve got that look. You’re going to try and argue with him.”

Dean snatched a glance at Cas. He was talking to the sales associate now.

“I don’t want to owe him anymore than I already do,” Dean hissed to Sam. “Cas is already paying for this trip and I don’t—“

“I don’t care,” Sam said. His voice was flat. “I honestly don’t care. Let Cas buy you the boots. Okay? I just…” His fists clenched. “It’s really, _really_ stressful to listen to you two fighting all. The fucking. Time. It’s like when you guys first broke up, and I don’t want to deal with it anymore, okay? I’m done. I’ve gone through this already and I’m done.”

Dean stared.

Sam stood and thrust his hands into his pockets.

“Sam…” Dean tried to come up with something to say and found nothing. Sam ambled blindly over to the display of ski gear and ended up standing in front of snowboards and staring into the middle distance.

“Dean.”

Dean looked up at Cas and nearly opened his mouth to say something like, “We gotta figure our shit out, Cas, this is hurting Sammy.”

Only he didn’t, mainly because the sales associate hovering behind Cas didn’t need to hear it. Cas had a stack of three boxes in his hands and a hopeful expression on his face. Dean deflated and took the box from the top of the stack.

***

Half an hour later, they sped down US-40 toward Rocky Mountain National Park and Dean had a pair of really nice new boots on his feet. Even he had to admit that. They also had a bag of new hiking socks that Dean had only made minimal fuss over. Cas sat in the passenger seat and looked mildly dazed at how smoothly the whole operation had gone.

In the back, Sam’s expression was inscrutable.

Dean felt like he needed to say something, but of course had no idea how to start. It was probably a good thing when they turned a corner and got hit with a faceful of mountain.

It was not as if they hadn’t seen several snow-covered peaks before, through pine trees and in the distance, but _this_. This was immediate. These were towering cathedrals of mountains that rose from the landscape like blue-gray tsunamis of rock and snow. Dean found himself wanting to climb those things, even as he suspected that they’d kill him if he made the wrong move. The best part was that the road shot straight toward them, so Dean could marvel at the mountains without interruption.

Dean snatched a glance beside him and nearly laughed at the expression on Cas’ face. Like a kid who’d just met Batman. Cas leaned forward with both hands planted on the dashboard. Sam appeared next to Dean’s head and started snapping pictures.

“Just think,” Cas said in a distant voice. “Just think about what the earth has to be doing to make those. These kilometer-thick sheets of rock _buckling_ and _lifting_. And…” He hid a grin behind his hand. “It’s happening slowly for us, you know, but these mountains are so young compared to everything. Generations of mountains bigger and wider than these have already disappeared without any trace.” He turned to beam at Dean. “God, humans are so incapable of really comprehending it, aren’t they? We’re less than a footnote in the geologic time scale. It’s amazing.”

Dean didn’t have any idea what his face was doing. He hoped it was a genial expression.

It was only that Cas became downright gorgeous when he got like this. When his face shone with passion, when he started getting philosophical and poetic about his damn rocks and his mountains. Dean missed seeing it. He’d had no idea how much he missed it until right then, when his stomach twisted and something inside his chest turned hard and jabbing. He’d have liked to lean over and plant a kiss on Cas’ mouth, as if to taste the words Cas spun of a seemingly endless earth.

_But we’re here_ , the kiss would have said. _We’re pinpricks in the vast scheme of things but damn it. I’m here, you’re here, and we get to marvel at this together. If that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is._

Instead Dean gave the mountains another appreciative look.

“Yep,” he said. “Hard to believe.”

“Hey, Cas,” Sam said. “You know what we need to be listening to.”

Cas glanced back at Sam, and then his eyebrows lifted and he grinned.

“What?” Dean asked. He looked between Sam and Cas. “What do we need to be listening to?”

“I have the cassette in my backpack,” Cas said. “Get it, get it.”

“You have a cassette?” Sam asked as he hauled the battered backpack from the foot well. “That’s a true fan.”

“What are we listening to?” Dean asked, not expecting any real answer. Sam handed Cas a cassette tape, and Cas popped it into the deck before Dean could see a label. The first few guitar notes twanged across the speakers, and Dean covered his face with one hand.

“Oh my god,” he said. “Oh my _god_.”

“Shh,” Sam scolded.

“You’re both so friggin’ predictable.”

“Dean, we are in Colorado, driving among the Rocky Mountains,” Cas said seriously. “We’d be remiss not to listen to it at least once.”

“Yeah, but—“

“ _He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year_ ,” John Denver started warbling. “ _Coming home to a place he’d never been befooore._ ”

“Ugh.” Dean tilted his head back.

“Shush.” Sam slapped the back of Dean’s head. “You’ve been picking the songs the whole time. We’re staging a coup.”

“Whatever.” Dean tapped the accelerator.

“ _Rocky Mountain Hiiiiigh, Coloradoooo,”_ Denver crooned. Cas and Sam started singing along. Dean tried not to smile and failed spectacularly.


	4. Chapter 4

Wyoming spread before them in a slurry of green-gray sage, light brown soil, and occasionally the sharp red and orange of rocks. Sam watched the landscape pass them with his cheek pressed against the glass. It was so different from Kansas’ splurge of crops. The only agriculture here, Sam judged, was ranching. They didn’t pass many towns or houses, but they passed scads of ranches.

“Lowest population density in the lower 48,” Cas said when Sam voiced this. “Only Alaska is emptier.”

“Only people who want to live out here are the ones who don’t like neighbors and like rocks,” Dean commented, then grinned at Cas through the rearview mirror. “Looks like we found out where you’re moving, Cas.” Cas snorted.

Sam felt another little push of cheerfulness in his chest at this. Really, Dean making dumb comments should not have made Sam feel so relieved. But Cas reacted downright positively to the dumb comment, so it did.

Sam released a long, rattling sigh and tucked himself against the side of the Impala. He tugged his jacket closer around himself. Dean glanced over.

“Tired?” he asked.

“A little,” Sam admitted. He was glad they had a full day of driving today; nearly two weeks of camping and hiking were starting to take their toll. Even Cas had started suggesting that they stick to roadside features for a few days.

Dean reached over and rubbed a few times at Sam’s shoulder, and Sam hummed without meaning to. He’d noticed Dean doing this more often recently; little touches and words that Sam appreciated, even if he didn’t completely understand where they were coming from.

…Well he might have a guess. And in some ways he felt guilty for losing his cool at Dean like that in the store, but on the other hand, it had been the truth, and Sam felt like he had a certain right to voice it. It had worked, granted. Not that Dean and Cas were completely normal with each other, but Sam felt that the number of inane arguments had decreased. He’d be lying to say it wasn’t a relief.

Sam watched the blurred landscape through hooded lids. Dean remained contemplatively silent, Cas seemed to be scribbling something in his notebook, the Impala hummed beneath Sam, and the sun was a syrupy balm. Sam shouldn’t have been surprised that he fell asleep.

When he jerked awake again, the Impala was slowing and bumping along the road’s shoulder.

“’vrything okay?” Sam slurred, pulling his face away from the door.

“Yeah,” Dean told him in a low voice. “Cas just wanted to stop here.”

Sam peered out the window and found a very different landscape from the one he’d seen earlier. The gentle slopes had been replaced by massive hills.

“Sorry,” Cas said from the backseat.

“Nah,” Sam said around a yawn. “Be good to stretch my legs.”

The road, Sam noted, was completely empty as Dean turned off the engine and they all clambered out of the car. Sam had to squint against the high noon sun and the dry breeze blowing his hair back. The heat was an immediate thing living against his skin.

Cas took a few pictures of the road cut they had stopped in front of. Then, because the wall of rock was not sheer, he started climbing it. After a moment, Sam followed suit.

He drew level with Cas and found him scrutinizing the rock with a small hand lens.

“I can take notes again,” Sam offered. Cas glanced up at him and smiled.

“You’re going to spoil me.” He offered Sam his battered field book.

Sam positioned himself better on the slope then flipped open the book and found the last entry. It had been a short one from yesterday, when they’d still been lingering in Colorado.

Sam penciled in today’s date (already June, he mused) and then looked expectantly at Cas.

“If the field guides I’ve been reading are correct,” Cas said aloud, “then this is the Red Peak formation.”

Sam duly wrote _Red Peak formation._

“What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s a group of rocks deposited back in the Triassic,” Cas said distantly. He started scrubbing at the rock with his fingers, examining the miniscule grains that came away on his fingertips. “I need...” he grabbed for something in the vicinity of his waist, looked down to find the space empty, then muttered to himself.

“Hey!” he called down to Dean, who had set himself on one of the small boulders a few paces away. “Can you get my hammer? And my HCl?”

Dean glanced up, squinting thorough the sharp sunlight.

“You want me to get your acid?” he called back.

“My hydrochloric acid, yes.”

“So you’re going to drip some acid?” Dean persisted with a toothy grin. “And then get hammered.”

“Naturally.” Cas returned his attention to the rock without waiting to watch Dean laugh to himself, heave himself from the boulder and go to unlock the Impala.

“You’d think that he’d get tired of the same jokes every time,” Sam commented. A few pebbles slid beneath his boot, and he readjusted himself.

“If there’s one thing I truly believe,” Cas said, “it’s that Dean will always and forever be using the same ten bad jokes and acting like they’re hilarious.”

Sam watched Dean dig through the small nest they’d built in the back seat in the past few weeks. He sounded like he was singing something.

Sam tilted his head toward Cas.

“He hasn’t used the acid joke for a while,” he said. Cas side-eyed him. Sam couldn’t blame him; the words had come out almost accusatory.

“Well,” Cas said as he brought his nose closer to the wall of rock, “I imagine he doesn’t make a habit of hanging around people who regularly use hammers and hydrochloric acid. No set up.”

Sam _fwipped_ at the pages of the field book, his tongue between his teeth.

“I think he’s missed making those jokes,” he said, almost more to himself than to Cas. “Dean’s a…um…he likes familiarity.” The new blue Nalgene glinted at the base of the road cut. It had gained two new stickers: one from Rocky Mountain National Park and the other a tie-dye peace sign from a nondescript gas station.

Cas looked at him properly now. Sam didn’t quite have the nerve to look back.

“I know that,” Cas said after several seconds. Of course he knew. Sam didn’t need to be saying any of this, really.

“Things have been…really unfamiliar lately,” Sam kept his eyes fixed on Dean extracting the battered rock hammer and little white bottle of HCl. “It’s probably nice for him. To be back in familiar territory.”

Cas sighed almost inaudibly.

“People shouldn’t get too attached to familiarity,” he said. His voice came out rough. “Nothing stays the same. That’s the whole point.”

Sam bit at his lower lip. When Dean neared them, Sam reached out to grab the hammer and acid that Dean handed up to him. If Dean had heard any of their conversation, he didn’t let on.

Cas accepted the tools from the Sam and then used the sharp end of the rock hammer to tap at the road cut. He managed to chip away a small, palm-sized piece.

“Here.” Cas handed Sam the chipped-off rock and the bottle of HCl, as if Sam hadn’t just spouted a load of awkward, sideways comments. “Get a few drops on that. You remember what it means if it fizzes?”

“Um…” Sam accepted the small bottle and unstopped it. “It’s a reaction with…carbonate, right?”

“The HCl reacts with the calcium carbonate in the rock,” Cas agreed. “And calcium carbonate comes from the remains of shells. If it fizzes, there’s a good chance this used to be part of a shallow ocean floor.” Sam let a few drops of the acid land, but the liquid merely darkened the rock, nothing more.

“Right,” Cas said. “So it’s less likely this was ocean. Any other guesses?”

Sam grinned and tilted his head. “Cas, I’m pre-law, remember? I have no clue.”

“You’ve been hanging around me long enough, haven’t you?” Cas poked at Sam’s arm.

“Doesn’t mean I get it,” Sam protested, but looked at the rock again.

“It’s red, so it has a lot of iron,” Dean called up to them. Cas and Sam simultaneously looked down to find him back on his boulder, face tilted into the sun. He leaned back to look up at them. “The iron oxidizes. Literally rusts. So we get the red.”

“Yeah,” Cas said after a moment. Then, “Five points to Gryffindor.”

Dean released a deep laugh, and Sam grinned at the sky briefly. Cas dipped his head to hide his expression behind the brim of his hat. But Sam would have guessed he was smiling too.

“There are also ripple marks.” Cas cleared his throat and pointed to an area next to Sam’s hand where the rock undulated like something Sam would see at the beach or in a stream. Sam made an appropriate note in the field book.

“Thought you said this wasn’t ocean,” Sam said.

“Wind makes ripples too,” Cas explained as he squinted up the road cut. “The general thought is that this is the remains of a desert. Would have been right next to the ocean, if you look at the surrounding stratigraphy.” He paused, and then looked around at the hills. “This whole area is interesting, really. See how all the beds are tilted? That’s plate tectonics right there. Shoved this land up.”

And yes, the layer-cakes of rocks all looked like someone had taken them and set them at an angle. Stripes of red and orange and tan ran across the landscape.

“You want to hang around, just say so,” Dean told him. He’d gone back to letting the sun bathe his face. His eyes were closed. “We don’t have any plans.”

Cas looked down at Dean with an indecipherable expression.

“I could end up taking a while,” he tried.

“And?” Dean asked without opening his eyes. “We spent three hours at that one outcrop a few days ago.”

Cas glanced at Sam as if to ask for his opinion, and Sam shrugged to admit that it was true. Cas looked at the red rock again, then slid back down to the grass.

“You’re both going to probably regret letting me do this,” he announced with something far too much like excitement. Sam watched Cas jog back to the Impala and decided that he could handle it.

Ten minutes later, Cas was using his compass to take measurements of the angle of the rocks’ tilting. He kept muttering things to himself and referring to a tattered geologic map of Wyoming. Sam followed him along the road cut and then some, to where more rocks stuck out of the earth at sharp angles.

At about half an hour into the endeavor, Sam admitted that he was getting thirsty, and Cas insisted that he could start taking his own notes, no really Sam, just go relax.

Sam relented and approached the Impala to find that Dean had hauled out someone’s duffel bag and now sprawled in the thin grass, using it as a pillow. He had his arms crossed and his eyes closed; he looked utterly peaceful. Sam paused several yards away and watched. Maybe someone could have accused him of being this side of creepy, but damn if Sam had seen Dean look this relaxed within the last year.

“There’s more packs in the car,” Dean said, squinting his eyes open. Sam started walking again.

“Thought you were asleep,” he said.

Dean shrugged. Sam found a water bottle and bag of their dirty laundry, tossed the latter in the soil next to Dean, and sprawled out on the ground. The sun beat against his skin.

“We’re going to burn,” Sam observed after five minutes.

Dean hummed his agreement.

Sam supposed that the sunscreen was a few paces away, but not moving sounded like the much more attractive option. He could feel Dean breathing beside him, long steady gusts that reminded Sam of when they used to share a bed as kids.

“Dean?” Sam asked the sky.

“Hm?”

“D’you think we’re all doing okay?” Sam tilted his head to his left, eyes squinched, and watched Dean mouth the words to himself before turning to Sam.

“What d’you mean?” he asked.

“Are we all okay? You and me and Cas.”

Dean exhaled.

“My middle name is okay,” he said.

“Dean.”

Dean rolled his head so that he faced the sky again. He didn’t speak for so long that Sam thought that he’d opted to ignore Sam altogether.

“It ain’t easy,” he said in a low voice that, like the _shush_ of the sage, whispered through the heat. “But I figure we can get there eventually.”

Sam waited. Dean didn’t add anything more.

Surreptitiously, without quite examining his actions, Sam wriggled so that his arm pressed against Dean’s. Dean did not pull away, merely sighed. They listened to cars swish past once in a while and insects buzz somewhere nearby, and let the sun pour across them.

They both still lay like that when Cas returned. After a bout of silence, he informed them that Dean had gained another layer of freckles and that Sam looked like a tomato.

***

Lander, Wyoming was a small town with a one-screen theater and three bars. Dean informed them of this after he’d gone into a drug store to pick up a few things.

“But is there camping nearby?” Cas insisted.

“Sure, about ten minutes away in Sinks Canyon. The guy said that the campsites you’d pay for are probably full, but the Shoshone National Forest has dispersion camping.”

“Cool, free lodging then,” Sam said, and accepted the plastic bag Dean handed him. He dug through until he found his promised aloe, then handed the bag off to Cas.

“Yeah, and no toilets,” Dean sighed as he started up the engine. “Not even pits.”

“We can try to find a site with facilities,” Cas offered.

“I’ll survive,” Dean said, and pulled them into the road. “We need to stay in the area, right? You’ve been all over this area’s rocks like a middle-schooler on the hot girl.”

Sam snorted and Cas sighed.

Sinks Canyon featured towering walls of gray rock and trailer-sized boulders that had fallen and rolled along the scrubby slopes at the base of the canyon walls. The small river that flowed along the road grew thick with aspens and brush. Sam ended up craning his neck and jamming his cheek up against the window to watch the canyon walls whip past them. Cas kept talking about glaciers and cross bedding and generally sounding enthusiastic about their surroundings.

When they pulled in, the campsite was empty enough for them to find a location with a fire pit and shaded by several small trees. A smooth boulder stood nearby at a haphazard, cartoonish angle, like a giant had forgotten about it and left it behind.

“Look,” Sam said when they clambered out of the car. “Actual flowers.”

Indeed, a riot of bright yellow sunflowers and small purple blossoms had taken advantage of the river to grow in effusion. Sam decided he’d send a picture of it to Kevin as soon as he could.

But first came the now-familiar tasks of clearing away sticks and stones, setting up the tents, and gathering wood for that night’s fire. Despite himself, Sam ended up eying how Dean and Cas orbited each other. How Cas never quite looked Dean in the eye and Dean watched Cas in a way that he probably thought was inconspicuous. How when Cas handed Dean the tent from the trunk, their fingers kept to themselves and the words exchanged were deliberate and practical. None of the lazy, comfortable drabble Sam was used to hearing. He still got snatches of it; a joke here, a wry comment there. But the moments came stilted and didn’t flow into one another.

True, it wasn’t sniping, Sam could admit that much. But it was almost worse, because this was a step closer to how Sam remembered Dean and Cas. It was like a tease of what they’d lost, and that ached.

Sam stewed in these kinds of thoughts as he and Dean set up the tent and tossed their sleeping gear inside, and kept stewing while he smeared aloe on his burns. Finally, he announced that he was going to explore the river.

“Don’t get lost,” Dean told him right as Cas said, ”There are bears in the area, keep an eye out.”

Sam barked out a laugh and didn’t bother to explain himself. He jammed his phone into his pocket, grabbed a water bottle, and hiked into the brush.

He walked for a solid five minutes upriver, craning his neck to see the walls of the canyon. The swift flow provided a welcome relief to the almost-desert he’d been seeing the last few days; the air smelled greener and the water babbled pleasantly. Eventually, Sam found a collection of small boulders that allowed him to peel his shoes and socks off and let his feet dangle in the icy water. Snow melt, Sam decided.

He was completely screened in by foliage. The paper white bark of the aspens stared at him with dark markings that looked unnervingly like eyes. Sam tried to take pictures of them, but none of the images on his cheap camera phone came out right, and in the end Sam gave up on the endeavor.

After that, Sam found Kevin’s number. He hit the “call” button with a sharp jab and squinted at the sky while he waited through the ring tone.

“Hey!” Kevin said when he picked up. Sam almost immediately felt something inside him unknot.

“Hey.” Sam dabbled his feet in the smooth flow of water. “Am I bothering you? It’s a Saturday so I figured…”

“No, yeah, totally,” Kevin assured him. His voice sounded tinny. “I do still get the weekends off. How’s it going? I got your picture this morning.”

“Yeah?”

“Would have sent something back but it would have been either the kitchen or my bed because those are pretty much the only things I’ve seen today.”

_You could have sent either of those things,_ Sam would have liked to say. _You could have sent a picture of yourself. I’d have liked anything you wanted to send._

Sam didn’t say that. Just because Kevin was basically Sam’s only friend outside of Dean and Cas right now didn’t give Sam the right to be clingy.

“That’s fine,” Sam said instead. “We got into Wyoming today.”

“Cool.” Sam could hear bed sheets rustling in the background. “Is it any different?”

“A little emptier. Less green overall.” Sam studied his view again before adding, “Not right where I’m sitting though. There’s a river here.”

“Any mountains?”

“Not like Colorado’s. But they have these huge hills and you can see the rock layers all tilted. Like, um…like lasagna stuck in the ground at these wonky angles.”

Kevin released a bark of a laugh.

“Lasagna. That’s great,” he said, and sounded genuinely delighted. Sam grinned too; he couldn’t quite help himself.

“Yeah, Cas is having a field day.” Sam leaned back on the boulder. “Pretty sure we’re going to hang around this area for a few days. That’ll be nice, to stay in one spot for a while.”

“And no one’s getting cabin fever yet, huh?” Kevin asked.

“What d’you mean?”

“Maybe you guys get along, but if I were stuck with my mom in a car for that long? We’d start getting snippy right about now.”

“Yeah.” Sam paused. “Um. It’s kind of a weird situation already, so…” He kicked at the water.

“Weird how?”

“I don’t…” Sam tried to find the right words and faltered.

When Kevin spoke again, it sounded hurried.

“You don’t have to talk about it—“

“I do,” Sam said honestly. “It’s just that…damn it, I usually make a point of not talking about it.”

“I mean, if you want, I can start asking invasive questions,” Kevin offered. Sam laughed.

“Nah,” he said. He scrutinized the river another moment before switching the phone to his other ear. “Okay,” he said. “So, Dean and Cas used to date.”

“Huh, really?” Sam heard a mattress creak. “Were they serious?”

“Let me put it this way,” Sam said. “When I was a kid, I was convinced they’d end up married.”

“Wait, a kid? They were together that long?”

“Kind of. Dean and I met Cas when I was in kindergarten and Dean was in fourth grade. Cas moved into town and he and Dean got to be friends. I met Cas pretty soon after that and, y’know. We ended up growing up together. Cas is essentially my brother.

“They’d say something different, but I’m pretty sure they started crushing on each other in grade school and just kept denying it into high school. I, uh.” Sam grinned. “When I was a kid, when I drew pictures of my family I always had Dean and Cas holding hands.”

“That’s kind of adorable,” Kevin admitted.

“Mm,” Sam hummed. “Anyway, in their freshman year of high school they figured themselves out and got together. In secret for a while, because this was a school in the middle of rural Kansas and my dad wouldn’t have been all that thrilled with Dean dating a dude. But it was pretty much out in the open by junior year and they sort of became the school’s disgustingly compatible couple.”

“That’s awesome,” Kevin said.

“It was,” Sam agreed. “And they were…y’know. They were happy. We were all happy. Some shit happened; my dad dying in my senior year was the main thing. But Cas was amazing through all of it, being there for us. He and Dean lasted for eight years total, into Cas’ senior year of college.”

“And then?” Kevin asked, because Sam had paused.

“And then last year, they broke up.” Sam frowned into the middle distance.

“Why?”

Wasn’t _that_ a loaded question? Sam felt like laughing, but didn’t.

“I mean, they started getting into these massive arguments that dragged on for weeks.” Sam sighed. “I guess it got to a point where they were stressing each other out more than anything else.”

“What were they fighting about?”

“Dunno. Stupid stuff. Cas says they stopped ‘being a positive thing for each other’ and all Dean will say is that they wanted different things. And uh—“

Here Sam rubbed at his eyes until splotches of color spread across his eyelids.

“It was bullshit,” he all but muttered. “It’s still bullshit. Because they’re basically my family, besides Bobby and Ellen, and when they stopped interacting it left me like…like the kid in a divorce. It sucked.”

Kevin remained silent.

“If they’d been able to interact normally it might have been okay, but they just…were in this funk. It’s still like that. They’re either arguing or making these attempts at acting normal that never come off right. Like they’re completely different people. And if I try to talk about it with either one, they shut me down or go on tangents.”

“That’s rough,” Kevin said in a low voice.

“It’s _stupid_ ,” Sam corrected. “It’s stupid of me because you know what? When they broke up, that’s when I started skipping classes and work. You remember that? I was a mess because my fucking brother and best friend broke up. Why the hell was I getting messed up over _that_?”

“Well, you said it yourself,” Kevin said reasonably. “They’re your family. I know I hate it when two friends of mine break up and I’m left in the middle. Probably tons worse in your situation.”

Sam coughed out a half laugh, because Kevin sounded so damn rational about this. Like he wasn’t hearing about how a twenty-something had an emotional breakdown over his brother’s dating life.

“Dunno,” Sam grumbled.

“No, seriously,” Kevin insisted. “Breakups have collateral. You were the collateral and it wasn’t fair. I think you’re allowed to be pissed at the situation.”

Sam considered expanding on what he was talking about, because Kevin clearly didn’t understand. He considered explaining Ruby and her friends. The nights with no clear memories attached to them and the discovery of all the substances that could make the pain go away, how Sam chased them because it was better than the driftless feeling that Dean and Cas gave him.

But this was Kevin Tran. Kevin Tran with his goals of presidency and his perfect grades, his impassioned discussions of political issues and his sweet smile. He didn’t need to hear that. Didn’t need to hear it and realize what a fuckup Sam was. Sam was selfish enough to decide to not mention any of it.

Instead Sam gripped at the phone and said, “Yeah. I guess so.”

***

Sam hiked back to the campsite feeling off kilter. It had been nice to rant about Dean and Cas to someone, but he hadn’t mentioned Ruby at all, and he couldn’t pretend like she wasn’t part of the whole thing. She undeniably was, always drifting through the back of his mind with her grins and her sparking words and the way her hands used to be able to smooth all the worries away, all the loneliness and the frustration. Sam could have used those hands right now. That and…

Sam slapped a sunflower away as he stepped into the clearing that represented their campsite. He found Dean perched on a log next to the empty fire pit, fiddling with his pocketknife and a chunk of wood.

“Hey.” Dean looked up as Sam approached. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam said automatically, and then tried to school his features into something less scowly. “No fire? We eating cold soup again?”

“Nah.” Dean set down his impromptu whittling and grinned. “We’re getting a night on the town.”

“Thought you said there were three bars total,” Sam pointed out.

“Which is three bars more than what I’ve been seeing recently.”

“Oh, please.” Cas’ voice drifted from the tent. “We’ve been stopping at plenty of diners and bars.”

“And we’ve been hanging around a campfire at least twice as much.” Dean jostled the tent as he passed. “C’mon, I haven’t had greasy bar food in at least a week.”

“God forbid you go without your bar food,” Cas mumbled, but he also climbed out of the tent, so Sam figured he wasn’t too against the idea.

Twilight was still a hint in the sky when Dean rolled them into town for the second time that day. Sam decided that it was decently bustling for its population. When they walked into the local bar and grill, the tables were nearly all full and they had to wait a solid fifteen minutes for their food. Once it arrived, though, Dean announced that this was the best damn buffalo burger he’d ever had, and made both Sam and Cas try a bite.

They sat on the bar’s back patio, and the three of them watched the sun dip behind the buildings while kids screeched and patrons shared old jokes around them. Once it got dark enough, strings of lights appeared in the trees above them. It gave everything a warm, homey glow.

Sam sat beside Cas and across from Dean—occasionally playing a violent version of footsies with the latter, because that’s just what they _did—_ nursed his beer and tried to let the day’s emotional weirdness sluff off. Dean and Cas were acting downright friendly toward each other (no doubt thanks to the alcohol, but Sam wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth), so really, that ought to have been enough.

“My turn for the next round?” Cas asked at one point, and Sam and Dean both assented.

“Get me whatever Sammy was drinking,” Dean said. “The local brew. That was amazing.”

“Lookit you.” Sam grinned at his brother as Cas left them to snake through the crowd. “Drinking local brews. Thought that stuff was for hippies.”

“Hey now.” Dean held up a threatening finger. “Never said they had everything wrong.”

At that moment, a group of what looked like college students slid past them and claimed the table next to theirs. One of them, a girl with a mane of dark brown hair, trailed a gangly mutt that wagged its tail when Sam looked at it.

Sam watched Dean’s eyes track the group. And then stay on the group. Something soured in the pit of his stomach. His brother had that _look._

“Don’t,” Sam said, and Dean flicked his eyes up to him.

“Don’t what?”

“Listen, you can pick up whoever you want when…” Sam shrugged to communicate the “when your ex-boyfriend isn’t here” part.

Dean stared for a moment, his face twisted up.

“I didn’t _do_ anything,” he said.

“You were thinking about it.”

“I was freakin’ _looking_ ,” Dean scowled then leaned back. “Jesus, Sammy, what crawled up your ass and died?”

“I just…” Sam gripped at the table. Again, going into conniptions over his brother’s dating life. Freaking messed up.

“What if Cas starts chatting to someone, huh?” Dean pressed. His shoulders were getting more and more squared. “You going to police him too? You going to stand around and act like we’re all supposed to act like the old days?”

_I want us to have some respect for the old days._ The phrase popped into Sam’s head, and he decided against voicing it.

“So you wouldn’t care if Cas hooked up tonight?” Sam insisted.

Dean’s shoulders dropped. He leaned back.

“No,” he said, then drained the last of the beer in his glass and all but slammed it into the table.

“Well, never mind then.” Sam jerked his legs out from beneath the table. “You’re right, this is between you guys.”

“Sam.”

“I’ll stop giving my opinion.”

Sam stood and started edging his way past the tables. He half expected Dean to follow him, but when he turned around, all he saw was unfamiliar faces.

Sam emerged on the sidewalk and hung a right. He walked for nearly five minutes, eyes on the dimming pavement and hands jammed into his pockets. He passed stores either closed for the night or in the process of closing. Couples wandered past, dogs sniffed curiously at him. Eventually, Sam found another bar. The second out of the three, he had to guess.

“ _Live Music!_ ” a poster on the window announced; it showed a band that Sam didn’t recognize. Probably a local group. And because the sky had well and truly edged into night, and the bar looked filled with a golden-honey light, and it was crowded and promised alcohol, Sam slipped inside.

This bar had a slightly less homey feel to it, but Sam didn’t mind that. He slid up to the bar and soon had himself a bottle to nurse. The promised live music proved to be a bluegrass group, and their violins, guitars, banjos, and twangy voices provided a pleasant undertone for the chatter of thirty some-odd people.

Sam kept an eye on the door in case Dean or Cas came looking for him, and had no idea whether to be pleased or disappointed when they didn’t appear. Perhaps Dean had approached one of those college students. Or Cas had found the oldest patron in the bar and started up a conversation because Cas tended to do those sorts of things.

Somewhere into his third drink, the group of college students from earlier entered. Sam eyed them as they wound their way through the crowd, all laughing and teasing one another. They ended up a few stools away from Sam.

The girl who’d had the dog stood closest to him. Her dark hair hung sleek down to her mid-back; longer than Ruby wore her hair, but it looked just as thick. The girl’s equally dark brown eyes caught the light every time she threw back her head to laugh. She had on a simple orange tank top and jean shorts, and her skin had a brown kiss to it. Sam wondered whether she and her friends were local students or travelers.

The band finished a song to applause and some whoops. When they started up again, the tune had become sprightly and teasing. The main vocalist, a man with a neat beard, swung words into the microphone in a way that made Sam wonder if this was meant to be a dancing song.

“ _Everywhere I go I keep looking for my baby_

_Everywhere I look I keep findin’ she’s gone_

_Used to drive her wild now she’s drivin’ me crazy_

_Damned if the right one didn’t go wrong_

_Damned if the right one didn’t go wrong.”_

Sam snorted into his drink. Sure, half the songs these guys had been playing were break up songs, but this one felt particularly applicable.

A bout of laughter, and Sam glanced over to find the group. The couple next to Sam had left, and now there was no barrier between Sam and the group. As Sam watched, the girl with the long hair glanced over to him. Then she turned back to her friends, but Sam didn’t think he’d imagined it either.

“ _Sitting on a bar stool listenin’ to the jukebox_

_Damned if the right one didn’t go wrong_

_Damned if the right one didn’t go wrong, babe.”_

Sam finished his drink and wondered if he’d have enough cash on hand for another one.

“You liking the music?”

Sam jerked his head up. Two bright brown eyes above an orange tank top had somehow sidled up to his side without him noticing. Sam blinked at the girl and discovered that she had several braids hanging in her hair. Ruby would not have worn braids. But she would have approached someone with an opener like that.

“Sure.” Sam gave her a small smile. “They’re catchy.”

“They sound like Yonder Mountain wannabes,” the girl said, but she didn’t sound dismissive. Merely as if she was stating a fact. She peered at Sam. “You ever listened to Yonder Mountain?”

“Don’t think so,” Sam admitted.

“Big name in the bluegrass scene,” the girl informed him. She caught sight of Sam’s empty glass. “Here, let me buy you a drink and in return you listen to me yammer about folk bands. Willing?”

Sam grinned harder. Ruby could have said the same thing verbatim, except she’d have substituted classic rock for folk bands. Something warm broke open inside Sam.

“I can deal with that,” Sam said.

“Cool beans.” The girl stuck out her hand. “Shelby.”

“Sam.” Sam took her hand.

“What’s your poison then Sam?” Shelby squinted at the wall behind the bar. “I’m a gin and tonic person myself.”

“Whatever they have on tap’ll be fine,” Sam promised her. “Where’s your dog?”

“Benjy? He’s outside.” Shelby glanced over at him. “You been stalking me?”

“You uh, I saw you guys at the other bar,” Sam admitted. “You walked right past our table.”

“Yeah.” Shelby’s eyes sparkled. “I know.”

Near the back of the bar, the band finished their song, but Sam wasn’t listening anymore.

***

Shelby bought Sam another beer, and after that she bought a round of shots. By then Sam had met her friends, and learned that they were all from the University of Arizona, out for a summer road trip. Sam said vaguely that he was doing the same and didn’t offer any more details.

After the third shot, things started getting fuzzy. Shelby was always there, swimming in and out of Sam’s focus in a blur of bright orange. At some point she tied her hair into a voluminous tail and she looked beautiful. Sam told her so.

“Dunno,” Shelby told him. “I think you could give me a run for my money in the hair department.”

Ruby had always liked Sam’s hair.

They stood outside the bar now. Sam had no idea how they’d gotten there. Shelby pressed close to him, and her eyes were bright. A black mutt wagged its tail at Sam’s feet, and Sam dropped to scratch it behind the ears.

“Where you staying?” Shelby asked. Sam peered up at her.

“Campground in Sinks Canyon,” he said.

“I’m in a hostel a few blocks away.” Shelby leaned down to pet her dog. Sam grinned and stood.

Shelby’s friends left them to find another bar, but Shelby and Sam wandered down a side street that had fewer lights and more small gardens. The breeze felt warm and kind, and Shelby’s dog sniffed at the grass as they ambled along.

“Sorry,” Shelby said suddenly. “But I gotta ask. Sure you’re not taken? ‘Cause you’re fucking gorgeous.” She was slurring slightly. “And I don’ wanna be a homewrecker, man, that’s not my style.”

Sam’s mind gave him a mental image of a laptop covered in political stickers and a wide smile. But no, not really.

“Nah.” Sam edged his hand toward Shelby’s, and she took it readily.

“Man.” Shelby grinned up at him. “Lucky night then.”

They kissed, pausing on the sidewalk and the dog investigating a hedge. They kept kissing as they neared the hostel. Shelby led him to a small room with two bunk beds—“My friends’ and they’ll be out for another few hours”— and gently pressed Sam onto the bed and straddled his lap. Sam didn’t tell her that he and Ruby used to do this all the time, but he was thinking it.

“Hey,” she gasped, somewhere after her shirt had come off and before she started fumbling with Sam’s belt. “You wanna smoke?”

“Hm?” Sam blinked.

“Here.” She slid from Sam’s lap and rooted through a faded duffel bag. She pulled out a pipe and baggie. Sam regarded them with a mostly blank mind. Shelby prepared the pipe, took a drag, then held it out to Sam. She resembled Ruby especially well in that moment.

“I, uh…” Sam tried to think about how to explain what the smell did to him. What kinds of things it made him remember.

“Just pot,” Shelby promised. “Good stuff too.”

Sam shouldn’t. He wanted to say this. Cas and Dean would…Sam felt his face shutter. He took the pipe.

That, plus the alcohol, and Sam practically wafted through the next few hours.

***

“Where’s Sam?” Cas asked as he plunked down three glasses of cold, foaming beer. Dean barely lifted his head.

“Stretching his legs,” Dean said before pulling his beer toward him and taking a little too long of a drink. Cas remained standing and looked around the patio. He looked to Dean again, who avoided his eye.

“What happened?” Cas asked.

“Nothing.”

Cas’ eyes narrowed. Everything in Dean’s body language spoke of avoiding the truth, trying to pretend things were business as usual. It was so typical of him.

Something snapped inside Cas. Such a pleasant past few days, and this was all it took to send him careening down the same road.

“Don’t even.” Cas leaned forward and felt that cold, harsh anger wash over him again. “I’ve hung around you two for too long. Where’s Sam?”

Dean pressed his lips together.

“Needed a walk.”

Good lord.

“Dean,” Cas slid into his seat across from Dean. “Can you please, _please_ talk to me in a straight line? Just one effing time would be fantastic.”

Dean screwed up his face.

“The hell are you talking about?”

“The last two years, Dean!” Cas hissed. “It’s always a guessing game with you.”

“I tell you plenty!” Dean’s voice pitched into something a little above normal speaking volume. “You didn’t fucking _listen_. You’re always off on your own planet.”

_No, I’m really not,_ Cas wanted to say. _Maybe in high school, but_ _I think I listen just fine these days; I think you don’t want to talk._

Cas ground his teeth and then clasped his hands on the table. He studied them for ten seconds. He lifted his head and looked Dean square in the eye.

“Sam.” The name came out like a stiff peace offering. “Where is he?”

Dean looked to his right, rubbed at the lower half of his face.

“Left,” he said. He didn’t have as defensive a tone this time, and Cas felt inclined to believe him. “I pissed him off.”

“How?”

Dean’s mouth twitched.

“He got mad that I was checking someone out,” he said. Nothing in his voice or countenance indicated reluctance or embarrassment. On the contrary, Cas saw this as an offensive, most likely to see what kind of reaction Dean could get out of him. “Said I shouldn’t do that with you around. I told him we weren’t like that anymore. He walked off.”

Cas’ toes curled inside his shoes, and he only allowed himself that much because he knew Dean wouldn’t see it. A brief mental image of Dean at one of these tables with a young, attractive thing made something ugly uncurl inside Cas. Ugly and ten kinds of hypocritical.

Dean watched him with bright green eyes lit up by the lights hanging above them. He wanted to see it, Cas realized. Dean wanted to see the ugly thing on Cas’ face, where he could assure himself of its existence. Or didn’t want to see it. Wanted to solidify the idea that they had stopped caring about each other like that. Wanted to just _know_ , one way or the other. The state of limbo was a precarious and torturous one. Or maybe Cas was projecting his own feelings.

Cas’ knee-jerk reaction was to deny Dean that; numbness was always safer than smearing emotions over everything. If he let Dean see anything, it would ruin the best defense Cas had. Because as soon as Dean knew for sure that some part of Cas still cared, to whatever degree, then…

Then what?

Cas stared at Dean and wondered.

He’d waited too long to give a reaction, Cas realized suddenly. Something cracked in Dean’s veneer. Through it, Cas glimpsed the boy, the man he used to hold at night and assure was worthy. Was protected and cared about. Dean needed to hear that sometimes.

Who, Cas wondered, had been telling Dean that in the past year? Sam most certainly had relayed the part where Dean was worthy. Bobby and Ellen and other friends had probably added their own words. But although friends were dear, they didn’t always breach that last wall of trust and love. Sam practically lived on the inside of that wall. But Cas knew that Dean—crooked, sideways Dean—still thought of Sam as the thing to be guarded in their relationship. He wouldn’t accept a message of protection from his little brother, whether or not Sam tried to offer it to him.

That, as far as Cas knew, had become his bag. Sam had told him on more than one occasion, “He lets you actually take care of him, even if it’s off and on. You gotta promise you’ll make sure you give him that much.”

Sweet, earnest Sam. He’d trusted Cas with that part of his brother, and Cas had proven himself unfit for the task. Too many times in the last two years, when Dean opened himself up, made himself vulnerable, Cas broke him. Left him with this man sitting across the table who thought so little of himself that he’d made it his habit to throw Cas chance after chance to keep hurting him. And Cas kept taking those chances. Why did Dean keep opening himself like that? And why did Cas always rise to the bait so easily? Did he actually want to? Was it just because he _could_?

_I’m tired of it,_ Cas decided in a small mental thunderclap. _I’m so sick of it. Since when did it become easier to keep hurting him than telling him…_

Cas licked his lips.

“It’s your life, ultimately,” Cas said. His voice snaked between the chatter of those around them, the clink of glasses and the scrape of cutlery. “But I’d care.”

There. Floodgates opened. Cas supposed one of them had to crack first.

Dean lowered his face. Looked at Cas through his lashes. Cas waited. Considered that he’d read the situation all wrong and that Dean did not, in fact, give a shit about them anymore.

Only then Dean ducked his head completely until he was staring into his lap. His hands started shaking. Cas would have loved to reach out and capture them.

“Goddamn it, Cas.” Dean lifted his head again ever so slightly. His voice sounded thick. He didn’t say anything else.

“Is that such a surprise?” Cas asked. “That I still care?”

“No,” Dean said immediately. “Yes. I dunno.”

“Well, I do.”

“Wish you didn’t.” Dean lifted his head. His eyes had extra facets to them from their wetness. “Wish I didn’t. Make things easier.”

“Yes,” Cas admitted.

Dean muttered something under his breath.

“How’d we end up here, then?” he demanded.

Cas traced a whorl in the wood. He could think of a few things, but he hesitated to voice them.

“We’re different people these days,” he said.

Dean huffed and scrubbed at his face. They lapsed into silence for several minutes until Dean spoke again.

“Sam’d love to hear this,” he muttered. “Mr. Talk About Your Feelings.” Cas straightened and glanced around the patio again.

“He isn’t back yet,” he said.

“We’ll need to find him.” Dean turned his head and covered his mouth with his hand.

“C’mon.” Cas reached across the table and plucked at Dean’s shirt. “Call him.”

Dean did so, and Cas could hear the voicemail filter through.

“Probably still sulking.” Dean stuffed the phone back into his pocket. He looked a little helplessly at Cas. “I dunno if it’d be better or worse to try to follow him. Once he’s cooled down he’s usually okay, but before that…”

“I know,” Cas soothed him. He glanced around one more time. “Let’s give it half an hour.”

Dean nodded once, still looking wrung out.

They ended up drinking their beers and making small talk and otherwise letting their latest revelation sit between them. Not that they were ignoring it, Cas decided. They just needed to give it time to find its legs.

***

“I told you, I’ve already called him,” Dean insisted an hour later.

“Call him again,” Cas replied.

Dean scowled, but mashed at the buttons on his phone nevertheless. Cas crossed his arms and looked up and down the street again, as if Sam would appear by some miracle. They had paid their tabs already and now stood on the sidewalk outside the bar.

“Nothing,” Dean spat, and Cas huffed.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s start looking.”

Dean ran a hand through his hair. “He can’t have wandered that far, right?”

Cas and Dean exchanged a look.

“Remember in sixth grade when he walked out the front door and got all the way to Wal-Mart?” Dean asked.

“Is this another point about my abysmal skills at watching children?”

“What? No,” Dean pulled his keys from his pockets. “Forget it.”

“Are you okay to drive?” Cas asked automatically. Dean gave him a withering look.

Five minutes later, they cruised down Lander’s streets while Cas nearly hung out the window. He squinted at the people they passed and tried to find one who towered over those around him.

Half an hour later, they’d scoured the downtown area and moved to the outskirts of town.

An hour later, Dean’s grip on the steering wheel made his knuckles livid white and Cas’ stomach wouldn’t stop churning. He’d lost track of the number of times they’d called Sam’s number.

Cas was just about to suggest they search the road to the campground when a tall figure stumbled into view, and Cas all but screeched Sam’s name. Dean swore, slammed on the brakes, and tumbled from the Impala to where Sam ambled along the sidewalk.

He looked drunk, swaying like he was. As Cas neared, he smelled the pot.

_Shit_.

“Sammy?” Dean demanded from beside Cas, and Cas knew he’d seen and smelled the same things. “Where the _hell_ have you been?”

They neared Sam, who regarded them like they were acquaintances he’d seen in the grocery store and didn’t want to talk to. When Dean impulsively grabbed at his jacket though, and peered into his face, Sam didn’t try to resist.

“ _Well_?” Dean demanded.

“Dean,” Cas murmured, and touched his shoulder. Dean glanced at him, then dropped Sam’s jacket. Sam looked between them.

“I messed up.” The voice came out thin and raspy, and it made Cas’ chest crack.

“Okay.” Dean pulled at his mouth and took Sam’s elbow. “C’mon, into the car, kid, you can tell us on the way.”

“You’re gonna yell at me,” Sam mumbled. He sounded like he’d regressed ten years.

“No, I’m not,” Dean promised, and tugged at Sam’s elbow to get him walking. “Just freaking out a little. You disappeared on us, man.”

“You didn’t look for me,” Sam accused, and Dean sent Cas a slightly panicked look. Cas shrugged helplessly. Because it was true; they hadn’t. It felt like Ruby all over again, and that made Cas want to strangle something.

They did manage to get Sam into the car, but five minutes later he leaned out the window and sent bile spattering across the road. Dean swore and Cas busied himself with finding a water bottle and telling Sam that no, no one was going to kill him, it was fine.

When they got to the campsite, Cas had to find the flashlights while Dean practically radiated impatience and Sam huddled in the corner of the backseat.

“Don’t want to go into the tent,” Sam mumbled when Cas finally found a headlamp and told him he ought to lie down.

“We can put your sleeping bag outside, then,” Dean said as he opened the door and took Sam’s shoulders. “Cas?”

Cas fetched Sam’s sleeping bag and helped Dean coax Sam into the nylon. Sam retched again, but produced nothing except a thin, clear liquid.

“Sam,” Dean murmured when Sam had finished, “was it just alcohol? And pot? That was it?”

“Think so?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t remember a lot.”

Dean swore, and Cas smoothed at Sam’s hair.

“He’s going to need Tylenol,” Cas muttered to Dean. “Lots of liquids.”

“Shit.” Dean stood abruptly. “I used up our Tylenol last week.”

“What on?” Cas asked.

“I pulled my back, remember?” Dean groaned. “Look, I’m going to go back to town and stock up, okay? Can you take care of him?”

“I’m going to have to, won’t I?” Cas huffed, and the light from his headlamp threw Dean’s expression into sharp relief.

“What?” Dean asked, eyes narrow.

“This is Ruby again,” Cas told him. “It’s Ruby all over again. Why can’t we…?” He pressed his lips teeth together and exhaled heavily.

“Dunno.” Dean threw up a hand. “We’re both just fuckups when it comes to caring about people, I guess.”

Cas squinted at him.

“Make sure Sam doesn’t asphyxiate,” Dean said, and stalked toward the Impala. Cas watched him rattle over the dirt road. The campsite slumped into silence, save the river’s babbling.

Cas took a deep breath and bent over Sam. He found a trail of damp across Sam’s cheek.

“Oh, Sam,” Cas murmured, and brushed hair from his eyes. “I’m sorry. No one’s mad at you, I promise.”

“Were right,” Sam mumbled. “Ruby all over again.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I let her buy me drinks. Went home with her. She had...” A hitched breath. “She said it wasn’t a big deal. ‘nd beer and pot shouldn’t be a big deal but it’s a big deal f’r me.”

“Yeah.” Cas readjusted himself in the dusty soil. “It’s okay though, Sam. It was a mistake but—“

“Not a mistake.” Sam blinked, and his eyes looked wet again. “I wanted it. I w’s mad at you guys and she was just like Ruby. Made me feel like someone was _lookin’_ at me.”

Cas bit at his lower lip. The wind whistled through the canyon above them; it sent up a thin howl.

“Tha’s why it happened last time,” Sam continued. “Mad at you guys and Ruby was somethin’ different. She made me forget.”

Sam sniffed hard.

“Shelby—that was her name—wasn’t mean. Real nice. But then I felt bad an’...” Sam buried his nose into his sleeping bag. “Dunno what I’m tryin’ to say. But I told her I had to go. Figured you guys’d freak out.”

Cas kept brushing at Sam’s hair, keeping the strokes long and even. He didn’t know that he had the right to say anything.

“Still mad at you guys,” Sam mumbled again.

“You’re allowed.”

“Why d’you and Dean h’ve to hate each other?” Sam’s voice sounded ashamed and frustrated in equal measure. “Could deal w’th it if you didn’t hate each other.”

“I don’t hate Dean at all,” Cas said honestly.

“Don’t act like it,” Sam accused.

Cas found he didn’t have anything to say to that. He settled for making Sam take another drink of water and rubbing at his back and shoulder while the river splashed past them and the smudges of gold-yellow that signified sunflowers bobbed in a cool breeze.

***

Sam remained curled up in the tent most of the next morning. After transferring him there the night before, Cas and Dean had slept on either side of him, as had been the habit the last few weeks, and hadn’t tried to speak. When Cas had woken up the next morning, Dean had been gone, as was also their habit.

When Cas left the tent as quietly as he could manage, he found Dean sitting on a small boulder on the edge of the site. He watched the river tumble past him and was holding of the small sunflowers in his tanned hands. Cas thought of the first morning of their trip, when he’d seen Dean with his sweater and fire and coffee.

When Cas shifted, Dean twisted around and let the flower fall from his hands.

“Hey,” Dean said.

“Hey.”

Cas nodded to the tent.

“Sam’s still out,” he said.

“Probably for the best.” Dean scooted so that he faced Cas properly. “I have sausage for when he wakes up. Want me to get them started?”

“Not that hungry yet,” Cas admitted and then started walking toward Dean. Dean didn’t make any indication that he objected to this, so Cas went so far as to settle himself on the boulder next to Dean’s. After a moment of thought, he peeled off his shoes and stuck his feet in the water. The chill shot up his spine.

“I was going to try and wash off in here.” Dean nodded to the river. A smile played on his lips. “But I think I’d just give myself hypothermia.”

“Probably won’t be as bad by midday.” Cas kept his feet in the water another twenty seconds before he had to jerk them out. He rested them on the boulder and curled his toes when the wind slipped past the wet skin.

He and Dean remained silent as they watched the rising sun paint more and more of the canyon walls and slopes a dusky orange. It had yet to reach their campsite; they still sat in relative shadow.

“Glaciers made this place, you said?” Dean asked.

“Mm,” Cas agreed. “Carved it right out. The river came later and kept carving.”

“Pretty cool.”

“Yeah.”

The penny dropped.

“Good lord.” Cas had to duck his head almost between his knees. “Dean…”

“What?” Dean tried feigning innocent and failed.

“That was horrible. Of all puns…pretty cool?”

Dean just laughed, and Cas poked at his arm.

In some moment of obvious divine intervention—Cas imagined an intrepid partnership between Aphrodite and Apollo—the sunlight chose that moment to pour past the rim of the Sinks Canyon and add a fresh glow to Dean’s face. It picked out the strands of bleached gold in his hair and the nut brown of his skin. Cas found he was not a strong man in sight of this.

He exhaled, then stood just enough to lean across the space between them and press his lips to Dean’s. He made it a light one, not wanting to insist on anything. Dean made a muffled sound and reached out to clasp at the back of Cas’ neck. Cas had to brace himself against Dean’s knees, only he didn’t mind too much because Dean was exploring Cas’ mouth in a way that made Cas think of their first few weeks of courtship. When everything had been fresh, amazing, and intoxicating. When Cas was still busy internalizing the knowledge that his head-over-heels crush actually liked him back.

Maybe that was appropriate, Cas thought as he dug a hand into Dean’s hair and elicited a low groan. Maybe this could be their second start.

When they pulled apart, Dean had a blissed out expression that pretty well matched Cas’ mood. The sun had crept further across their campsite and now lit up the mess of small sunflowers and made the river water sparkle. It was like they sat in someone’s romance novel.

“I…” Dean licked his lips. “Is this okay?”

“I’m not sure,” Cas admitted. Dean glanced away and rubbed at his forehead.

“Dunno exactly what we’re doing here.”

“What do you want to be doing?”

Dean glanced back up at Cas.

“Not fighting with you,” he said. “Not being able to talk to you normally is shit, Cas.” He snapped his mouth shut, like he’d admitted something embarrassing. It made a spark of frustration rise in Cas’ gut.

“Me too.” Cas nudged Dean so that he could sit next to him on the smooth boulder. “Listen. I meant what I said yesterday. You still matter to me, Dean.”

Dean didn’t meet his eye. He hated recieving compliments, Cas knew that. But he _needed_ to voice this, because maybe that had been the problem all along. Cas not telling Dean in plain enough words what he meant. Hadn’t Dean complained about Cas being too terse for years now?

“Dean?” Cas ducked his head to find Dean’s eyes. “Do you believe me?”

“Sure,” Dean muttered. “It’s just too easy for me to psych myself out.” He took a breath. “Same, by the way. First few months, I’d wake up and you wouldn’t be there. It hurt.” He grinned tightly. “You know how hard it’s been the last few weeks, though? You’d start getting excited about damn rocks and I’d wonder what I’d fucked up to lose you.”

Cas pulled at his mouth and stared into the river.

“I want to say that we should try this again,” he said. “But I’m nervous.”

“Yeah,” Dean’s voice rasped.

Another several beats of silence.

“Maybe we can ease into it.” Cas looked up at Dean properly. “Start slow. See what happens. Last time—”

“That was last time,” Dean cut him off. “Can we…I just want to try this from the beginning again. Before all the crap started. Can we do that?”

Cas opened his mouth, closed it, licked his lip. He looked down at the river. (Ever changing from one second to the next. They weren’t their high school selves; that was the fact of the matter.)

But Dean’s face was such fragile architecture, and Cas didn’t have the heart to break it. Not this time. This time he’d regained his ability to be tender, and he intended to make use of it. Wordlessly, Cas reached out and grasped at Dean’s shoulders. He pulled Dean into him and smoothed at his back. Dean shook, Cas’ throat swelled, and he remained certain that they looked a little ridiculous, sitting on their boulder.

Good thing he didn’t give a damn.


	5. Chapter 5

Dean and Cas had sat on their rock for nearly an hour, talking quietly, when Sam finally emerged from the tent, squinting and bleary-eyed and looking far too pale. Dean had gotten on the sausages while Cas made Sam take a preventative Tylenol. Sam had silently accepted the food and medicine, then crawled back into the tent with his phone, a book, and a bottle of water. At least, Cas had told Dean, this particular hangover didn’t feature a lot of vomiting.

Sam emerged sometime in early afternoon. Dean was back to his whittling, sitting next to the stream with his feet dangling in the water. He heard the _zoooooop_ of the tent unzipping and turned around.

“Hey,” he called out. Sam blinked in the sunlight, then turned to him. He crawled out of the tent, thrust his feet into his ratty tennis shoes, and walked over to join Dean. Dean scooted so Sam could sit next to him.

“How you feeling?” Dean asked.

“Better than this morning,” Sam said in a croak. He stared at the river, his eyes glassy. His hands were clasped between his knees, his hair flew in ten different directions, and he had bags under his eyes.

“Where’s Cas?” Sam looked around the campsite scattered with their junk.

“Exploring the canyon.” Dean waved his knife. “There’re some trails.” Sam twisted around and studied the canyon wall behind them, which had grassy, boulder-strewn slopes at its base with trails zigzagging across them. Dean had watched Cas’ figure inch its way across the slopes for nearly an hour. Cas had told him they should take some time to “think about some things.” Dean had agreed and suppressed his disappointment that they couldn’t just…well, fall back into their old ways.

“Wish I coulda gone.” Sam turned back around and dug one hand into his hair.

“You were a little out of commission there, Sammy,” Dean nudged Sam and tried to keep his voice as light as possible. Sam still flinched.

“Right.” He took a deep, gusting breath. “Dean—“

“If you’re going to apologize, don’t worry about it,” Dean cut him off. “No, you probably shouldn’t have done the pot, and you got really drunk, sure. But it’s a pretty small hiccup, Sam, all things considered.”

Sam side-eyed Dean, and Dean smiled.

“It’s the principle of the thing.” Sam straightened and rubbed his hands across his thighs. “’Cause as soon as you pissed me off, look where I went to. I got smashed, high, and slept with a girl who made me think of Ruby.”

Dean straightened. “She made you think of Ruby?”

“Yes!” Sam looked at Dean with wide eyes. “This is a pattern, Dean, and it’s a bad one. I can’t go drown myself in...when I’m upset with people.”

Dean pursed his lips.

“You’re pretty self-aware,” he said.

“I’ve been reading.” Sam shrugged one shoulder. Of course he had.

Dean sighed and tilted his head up to the sky briefly. He needed Cas here. Sam and Cas were much more adept at the talk-about-our-emotions thing.

“Well,” Dean said slowly. “I guess part of it is I need to quit pissing you off.”

Sam shrugged.

“I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat,” he said.

“Yeah, but you had a point.” Dean bit at his bottom lip. “Listen, Sam, I know you took it hard when Cas and I split.”

Sam jerked his head up. Dean glanced over.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s _weird_ ,” Sam hissed, like they sat in a crowded room and people might be listening.

“What’s weird about getting down when your brother and best friend are fighting all the time?” Dean asked. “You read me the riot act back when we were getting the boots, didn’t you?”

“It’s not…” Sam rubbed at his eyes. “I don’t like that I’m affected by you guys so much, is it. That was part of the point with Ruby and that whole group. To prove to myself that just because you and Cas were acting like a pair of wet cats, I could still, y’know, be okay. Have my own friends and not have my fucking _peace of mind_ be dictated by two fucking _idiots_.” The last few words were yelled, and they echoed ever so slightly.

Dean pulled at his mouth.

“How about this,” he said after a few moments. “If you and Cas got really, really angry with each other and stopped talking, I would have no idea what to do with myself.” Sam squinted at him a little suspiciously. “I’m serious.” Dean shrugged. “I’d be a mess. You guys would drive me to the bottle in no time flat.”

Sam gave a short exhale and looked into the river.

“Sammy.” Dean ducked his head and had to peer past the little curtain of Sam’s hair. “I’m serious. You ask Cas, he’d say the same thing.” A pause. “We’re sort of a team.”

Sam’s eyes slid to meet Dean’s. Dean turned on that smile that he used to give Sam when he was a chubby, sloppy-haired toddler sulking in the corner.

“You’re a dork,” Sam muttered, but not mutinously.

“Wow, look who’s talking, Mr. Pre-law,” Dean leaned back.

“LARPing,” Sam sniffed, and Dean just rolled his eyes. Because Sam had lifted his head and had a small smile in the corner of his mouth, and Dean counted that as a victory.

Dean cleared his throat. “That being said though, I should probably tell you that…uh….” Another clearing of the throat. “Cas and I sorta talked last night and this morning.” Sam’s expression sharpened. “And we want to give this another shot.”

Sam’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline.

“Seriously?” he asked. He looked more confused than anything else. “But yesterday you and Cas…there was _no_ indication that you guys might still…” Sam gestured the rest of that thought with flapping hands.

“Yeah, well, people don’t always say what they mean.” Dean leaned back on the boulder. “We’re not back together or anything. But we’re going to test the waters, I think.”

Sam released a strange half laugh and shook his head at the river.

“Can’t believe it,” he said. “All this grief and you guys are just falling back together.”

“Thought you might be, I dunno, happy about it,” Dean pointed out.

“Happy can come later,” Sam said. “Right now I’m just mildly shocked.”

“Wow, thanks.”

“Not like that.” Sam looked back to Dean. “I just…just give me some time to process this, okay? It’s a little out of the blue.”

“Is it?” Dean frowned.

Sam shrugged. “Kinda yeah.”

“But…it’s okay, right?” Dean pushed, because this _mattered._

Sam grinned, a sudden and bright thing.

“Believe me,” he said, “it’s more than okay.”

***

Cas returned to the campsite a little before dinner; Dean had already started a fire and was getting the chicken ready to put on the grill. He’d gotten quite adept at outdoor cooking, he was proud to say.

Sam sat across the fire from Dean and hunched over the _Basin and Range_ book. Dean remained half-convinced that Sam was rereading it at this point, because the book wasn’t an especially thick one and Sam had been mulling over it for the past few weeks.

The light was just dim enough that Cas didn’t become visible until he was a few yards away. Sam must have heard him approaching because he snapped his head up before Dean was aware of anything. By the time Dean glimpsed Cas, Sam had stood and darted toward him.

They spoke in low voices, Sam hunched slightly. Dean watched them from the corner of his eye. They were both smiling; Cas nodded. Then they looked in Dean’s direction, and Dean became suddenly entranced by a piece of raw chicken. When he side-eyed them again, Sam and Cas were hugging, Sam’s arms folded over Cas’ shoulders and Cas’ arms around Sam’s torso. Something in Dean’s chest tugged. He hadn’t been lying to Sam before; they _were_ their own family. It didn’t do to have any two of them on bad terms.

Cas met Dean’s eyes over Sam’s shoulder, and they were warm.

When Sam and Cas joined Dean at the fire, Cas took a seat next to Dean and watched him dash spices over the chicken breasts.

He didn’t say anything, but he slid his hand over Dean’s and pressed something hard into his palm. Dean glanced down and found a small rock spackled white and black and bearing an orange tinge.

“Granite,” Castiel said, low enough that Sam couldn’t have quite made out his words. “All these boulders are made of granite. Magma sat in a chamber belowground at some point and slowly cooled into rock. It grew these large crystals.” Dean shifted his hand and watched the granite flash with small—but not tiny—facets. “Then it came to the surface,” Castiel continued, “as part of the these mountains. A glacier plowed through the mountain. And sometime recently, it went through a forest fire. That’s what gives it that orange tone.”

Dean looked up at Cas and found a small smile.

“I thought it was appropriate,” Cas said. He laced their fingers together, trapping the rock between their palms.

***

It reminded Dean of when he and Cas first got together back in high school. Namely, the butterflies in his stomach whenever he and Cas made eye contact. Or brushed against one another. Or when Cas was focused on something else entirely and Dean just watched from across the campsite. It was a little ridiculous, but Dean had made peace with it. Because even the potential of having Cas back…it felt like shucking a heavy backpack that he’d been carrying for too long. He practically floated.

They stayed in Sinks Canyon for nearly a week, Cas leading them on day trips that involved a lot of him examining rock beds, frowning at topographic maps, and gathering data. When they weren’t hiking behind Cas, Dean and Sam took to messing around with a hacky sack Sam had pulled from his backpack one day. They could kick the little cloth beanbag between them for several minutes at a time now without letting it fall into the dust.

Sometimes, when Dean was lucky, Cas slipped his hand into his or let their casual touched linger. It was small, but Dean had missed it nonetheless.

“So have you guys had make-up sex yet?” Charlie asked the day that they finally packed up and drove out of Sinks Canyon.

“Jesus, Charlie.” Dean glanced over at the booth containing Sam and Cas as if they’d heard her. They’d stopped for lunch at a small-town diner and were waiting for their food when Dean’s phone had started buzzing and he’d been pleasantly surprised to see Charlie’s number.

“What?” Charlie protested.

“That’s really none of your business.”

“Sorry, man.” Dean heard a sudden clatter of typing. “Just happy for you; never really understood why you guys broke up. You were, like, the gold standard.”

“We’re not really back together,” Dean said. “It’s more like a trial period.”

“Well, it’s still progress. I’d say it’s even worth missing the _best_ battle I’ve seen in years.”

“C’mon, Charlie, don’t tease me like that,” Dean groaned.

“Nuh-uh.” Dean could hear the grin. “You get to traipse around the country and go to Yellowstone and make up with your boyfriend. So I get to brag about my victory.”

“Did you call solely call to brag about the victory?” Dean deadpanned, even though both he and Charlie knew that Dean was waiting for the inevitable blow-by-blow account.

“Partially,” Charlie said. “I also called about a job for your unemployed ass.”

“Really?” Dean straightened.

“It’s not cars,” Charlie warned. “But I was talking to Garth yesterday and he mentioned that his uncle owns a repair shop in Lawrence. Apparently the guy’s losing an employee at the end of the summer and needs a replacement. It’s basically fixing electronics. Things like peoples’ lawn mowers and power washers. The occasional toaster and refrigerator.”

“Charlie, I _love_ you,” Dean enthused.

Charlie didn’t miss a beat. “I know. So should I pass along that you’re interested?”

“Yes. Yes, absolutely,” Dean nodded, even though Charlie couldn’t see him. “Do you have a phone number?”

“Yeah, Garth gave it to me.” Dean fished a pen from his pocket and grabbed a napkin from a nearby table. He scrawled out the number that Charlie read off to him then reiterated his confessions of adoration.

He could see the food arriving at their table and told Charlie that he had to go, but that he expected to hear a detailed account of the battle next time they talked.

“Roger that,” Charlie chirped. “Give Cassie a smooch from me and Sam a noogie.”

“Yeah,” Dean laughed. “Thanks again, Charlie.”

He hung up and stuffed the phone into his pocket; he could still feel the million-watt smile on his face.

“Good news?” Sam asked as Dean approached the table.

“I might have a job when we get back,” Dean said as he slid into the booth next to Cas. “Garth’s uncle has a repair shop.”

“That’s fantastic,” Cas said and squeezed Dean’s hand. “You’d have to be a top candidate.”

“I have a number.” Dean plucked a French fry from his plate and popped it into his mouth. “I’ll probably call before we leave town; might not get a signal the rest of today.”

Sam poked at his chicken salad a few times before asking, “What about school?”

Dean blinked.

“What about it?” he asked.

“Is that just it? You’re not going to consider school at all?”

“Sam…” Dean shrugged one shoulder a little awkwardly, because the kid looked like he was taking this personally somehow. “It was an option, but let’s be realistic. I scraped up a GED something like seven years ago.”

“The GED thing doesn’t mean anything.” Sam leaned forward. “You’re more than smart enough for KU. Cas, isn’t he more than smart enough?”

Dean glanced over at Cas and found a pensive expression. Cas shrugged.

“I’d be lying if I said no,” he said. “I teach undergrads all the time, Dean. They don’t have anything you don’t have.”

“Right.” Dean curled in his shoulders slightly. “Nice to hear. But there’s still paying for the apartment and food and things.”

“I could help.” Cas looked between Dean and Sam. “Bobby and Ellen would help. You could manage it, Dean.”

Sam looked entirely too smug.

“Cas.” Dean shook his head. “Listen, I know your family has some money, but…no. I really don’t…no.”

“It wouldn’t be a huge amount.” Cas tilted his head. “Just enough to be helpful.”

“No.” Dean dropped Cas’ hand so he could pick up his burger. “Listen, this job looks really promising and I’m going to call the guy.” He looked between Cas’ mildly hurt expression and Sam’s frustrated one. Damnit. They _knew_ they were doing it; Dean was positive.

“Maybe I can look at an application for next year though,” Dean amended.

Sam huffed, not satisfied but willing to let it drop for the moment. Cas’ mouth bunched up on one side and his eyebrows rose in a “fine, but you’re probably wrong” expression. Dean rolled his eyes at him.

***

Dean did call Garth’s uncle after lunch, but ended up with voicemail. He left a message explaining who he was and that he’d be out in the middle of nowhere for the next few days.

“Any luck?” Cas asked as Dean returned to the Impala.

“Voicemail,” Dean said. “Probably won’t hear back for another few days, if Wyoming keeps being a signal wasteland.”

“You’re telling me,” Sam sighed from the passenger seat. Dean had an urge to ask how many texts Sam had exchanged with Kevin since they’d rolled into town, but refrained in the end.

“Anyway.” Dean peered over Cas’ shoulder at the road atlas draped across the car’s nose. “Where next?”

“Yellowstone, ultimately.” Cas tapped at a large patch of green. “No need to rush though; I figure we can get there in two or three days, depending on how much we meander.”

“Let’s figure for three days then.” Dean clapped Cas on the shoulder.

***

They ended up going further north than expected for no reason Dean ever clearly understood. The words “dykes and sills” and “interesting” and “quick detour” had been used, and after that Dean hadn’t tried to argue it. Cas and Sam both seemed happy with the detour, and that was enough for Dean.

They watched the landscape grow progressively greener until tall pines replaced the bare rock. The sage persisted.

“We’ll be entering Yellowstone through the Shoshone National Forest,” Cas told them as Dean urged his baby up another fairly steep incline. “The view is supposed to be gorgeous.”

“Wow.” Sam held up the guidebook he’d been reading. “The road only opened last week. Apparently they’re still getting snow up here.”

“In June?” Dean glanced over at Sam.

“Elevation,” Sam shrugged and flipped forward a few pages. “Think we’ll be okay?”

Dean waved a hand. “If I could get Baby through that hell road in Colorado, we can handle anything.”

“’Kay then.” Sam slumped slightly in his seat and hitched his feet up on the seat. “You’re the car person.”

***

An hour later, Dean peered up at the sky for the fifth time in as many minutes. It hung heavy and iron gray above them. Several flakes of snow whipped against the windshield, and Dean wondered whether they had packed enough sweaters.

“We can always pull over,” Cas said from the backseat. Dean exchanged a glance with Sam.

“It should be okay.” Dean tapped the accelerator. They rounded another switchback and Dean’s heart sank at the way that the mist hung heavy and thick around the road. He double-checked that his brights were on and tapped the horn just in case. The last thing he needed was to meet someone barreling down the narrow road, especially since they had a wall of rock on one side and a steep drop on the other. Dean made sure not to think too much about the latter.

They remained silent as Dean drove, eyes on the sky and the way that it melted into the mist. Dean wondered how far they could possibly keep climbing. At one point, Cas dug through his duffel and pulled out a jacket that he handed up to Sam, who only wore a thin t-shirt.

Finally, Dean slowed the Impala and pulled over to the side of the road. The snow had accumulated into a fine dust, and the mist swallowed up the Impala’s headlights.

“We okay?” Sam asked.

“Not keen on driving through this with a cliff on one side.” Dean turned off the engine. “Give it a few minutes.”

A second later, the back door clacked open and Cas climbed out. Dean twisted around, sighed, then did the same. He blinked at the moisture that clung to his eyelashes.

“Cas,” he called out, and listened to the way his voice sounded slightly muffled. “Cas?”

“Right here.” A shadowy pillar waved an arm. “It’s fine, Dean. I just wanted to look.”

Sam shut the car door behind him and made for the shadowy figure that was Cas. Dean sighed again and followed.

Cas had walked to the edge of the road, arms crossed against the chill, and peered over the edge. Sam joined him, and Dean resisted the urge to reach out and grab at the backs of their coats.

“Geeze,” Sam said, sounding impressed. “This is literally carved out of the wall.”

“Don’t remind me of that,” Dean muttered. Cas looked back and smiled slightly. Dean tried to smile back but suspected it came off as more of a grimace. They remained silent after that, staring into the utter silence of snow, mist, and rock. It felt oppressive. Dean thrust his hands into his pockets, found the small granite stone Cas had given him, and wrapped his hand around it.

Eventually, though, the mist started to thin again and the snow slowed to a few stray flakes. They piled back into the car, and Dean resumed his white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel.

“What time is it?” Cas asked at one point, when the sheer cliffs had been left behind and they drove through misty pine forests.

Sam glanced at his watch. “Almost one. Why?”

Cas shrugged. “Hope it’s still light when we get to the park.”

As it turned out, however, the sky never got lighter than iron gray. When Dean glanced into the backseat, he found Cas scrutinizing one of the guidebooks he’d brought along.

“How’s it look, Cas?” he asked. “We almost there?”

“Hang on.” Cas pulled out his cell phone, and Sam and Dean had to listen to him talk to what sounded like a whole line of park rangers. When he hung up, he looked grim and leaned his arms on the top of the front seat.

“The campsites are all full,” he informed them.

“Wait, didn’t you make reservations?” Dean asked.

“Yellowstone is a crowded place. Any reservable sites were full by the time we decided to go on this trip at all.” Cas’ voice turned a shade sour. “And the first-come first-serve sites are now full as well. I thought we might get here faster.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault that the fucking snow—“

“I know, Dean,” Cas said in that infuriatingly stiff, too-calm voice. “In addition, we’re not allowed to camp anywhere else in the park.”

“Well, Shoshone is a national forest, right?” Sam twisted around in his seat as Dean huffed. “We can do dispersion camping tonight and then drive into the park in the morning.”

“Maybe,” Cas said. “But that’s the second problem. It’s supposed to be well below freezing tonight.” As a unit, the three of them regarded the foggy, snowy woods around them. “Inviting” was the last word Dean would have used for it.

“So we’re bundling up?” Dean tried.

“We might need to find lodging,” Cas murmured.

“Where?” Dean glanced back at him. “The last town was hours ago.”

Cas fell back into his seat. “Keep driving, I’m going to make some calls.”

Dean and Sam exchanged a look.

Over the next twenty minutes, they listened to Cas make several calls and end all of the them with a polite, “Well, thank you anyway.”

“Cas, we can just heap on the blankets,” Dean tried after the sixth call.

“Shh,” Cas said without looking up. Dean scowled at the road. “Yes, I was calling to inquire if you have any lodgings available tonight.” A pause. “Really? How large…really? No, no, that’ll be more than enough. What are your rates?”

Dean drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and Sam shot him a look.

“Yes, we’ll take that,” Cas was saying. “My name is Castiel Milton. C-a-s-t-i-e-l. Uh, yes, like the angel. My mother is a religious studies professor.”

Dean’s mouth twitched despite himself.

“We should be there in about half an hour. Yes. Yes. Thank you.”

Cas hung up looking thoroughly pleased with himself.

“We have a room,” he announced. “A whole cabin, in fact. Someone cancelled at the last minute.”

“How much?” Dean asked. Sam shot him a mutinous glare.

“I budgeted for emergencies like this.” Cas stuffed the phone back into his pocket. “We’ll be fine. You’ll want to keep on this road and follow the signs to Silver Gate, Dean.”

Dean exhaled loudly so that Cas would know his feelings on the whole situation and kept driving. The boot incident still stood fresh in his memory, and it wasn’t as if he was eager to try to sleep in below freezing temperatures.

***

They rolled into Silver Gate and nearly rolled out of it again. The town couldn’t have had more than ten buildings total, and most of them seemed to provide lodging.

“The north entrance to Yellowstone is close,” Cas explained as Dean pulled up to a collection of small cabins. “They take the spillover.”

“It’s beautiful.” Sam grinned and unfolded from the car. Dean lifted his head to take in the misty peaks still bearing snow and the sentries of pines at their base. When he stepped from the car, the air hung wet and cool against his skin, and he shivered slightly. Cas was already heading into the largest cabin, and Dean left him be. He leaned against Baby and listened to her pop as she cooled down. He patted her absentmindedly; she’d done a good job so far. She’d bear them home when they were done.

“We lucked out.” Sam leaned against the car next to Dean. “It’s already chilly.”

“Mm,” Dean grunted. Sam poked his side with his elbow.

“What’s up with you?”

Dean shrugged.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. Sam rolled in his lips, but focused on the mountains again.

The town was nearly empty at the moment; a couple and their two small children walked across the road a few yards away. Other than that, it was all mist and trees and rock. Dean heaved a sigh, zipped his jacket up all the way, and tucked his mouth into the collar.

The large cabin door opened and Cas emerged with a handful of papers and something in a plastic package.

“Here.” Cas tossed the package to Dean, who had to tug his hands out of his pockets to catch it. He flipped it around and got an impression of an air horn. Then he read the label, and his eyebrows shot up. He looked at Cas.

“Seriously?” he asked.

“What?” Sam leaned over, then laughed slightly.

“It’s not funny,” Dean snapped at him. Then, to Cas, “Do we really need bear spray?”

“This is bear country,” Cas told him. “It’s safer to have it on hand. We might need to get a bear bell too, though usually groups of three are all right. It’s the loners that might look interesting to a grizzly.”

“Thanks, Cas.” Dean looked back down at the bear spray. “Now I’m going to have to worry about us getting mauled in our sleep.”

“That only happens to people who leave the trail and go looking for the bears,” Sam assured him. “Unless you’re like that one couple last month on the news. I think they were just unlucky.”

“Right,” Dean put the bear spray on top of the car and opened the back door to start digging out their duffel bags. “Super.”

***

The cabin was not especially large and smelled a little damp but it had a flushing toilet and a hot shower, so to Sam it felt like the height of luxury. No phone signal, unfortunately, but Sam had gotten used to that over the last few days. Kevin knew that texts would be sporadic, and he was the only one who Sam tried to contact anyway.

Sam stood in the center of the small room and looked over a tiny kitchen, rough-hewn table, and bunk beds tucked in one corner. Through a narrow doorway, Sam could see the edge of a queen bed that nearly took up the entirety of its room. Cas had already squeezed past it to find the bathroom.

Sam decided that having three separate beds was really the best situation for them. This way, they didn’t have a lot of awkward negotiating over who would be sharing with whom.

Sam dumped his duffel on the top bunk to Dean’s immediate tune of, “Dude, I call dibs on the top bunk.”

“Wow, no.” Sam poked at Dean’s shoulder. “That’s an outright lie.”

“Fine, then as the one with four years of seniority,” Dean said.

“We can wrestle for it.”

“Don’t you dare.” Cas emerged from the second room. “We don’t need to pay for a broken chair.”

“Aw c’mon Cas.” Dean smirked, leaned against the bedpost. “That was once.” Cas raised an eyebrow.

“How about rock paper scissors?” Sam suggested. Dean side-eyed him then shook out his arms.

“If you’re game,” he said. Behind him, Cas ducked his head and looked like he was trying not to laugh.

Stifling his own grin, Sam placed his right fist in his left palm and looked Dean in the eye. Three smacks of their fists against their palms, and on “Shoot!” Dean threw a scissors and Sam threw a rock.

“Always with the scissors, Dean,” Sam sighed.

“Best two out of three,” Dean insisted.

“Nah.” Sam swung himself up on the top bunk and unzipped his duffel. “We’re settled here.”

“You’re gonna fall on top of me in the middle of the night,” Dean told him without any heat, and tossed his own duffel on the lower bunk. “Hey, Cas, they got some kind of store here? We have a kitchen, might as well use it.”

***

Evening did not so much fall as expand; the dim light filtering through the cloud cover simply darkened into a thick twilight. The rain had started an hour ago, and in the remaining light, Sam could see it dripping from the cabin’s eaves in a steady rhythm. The lights from the other buildings looked hazy through the heavy drizzle, and the mountains had become suggestions against the sky.

Sam—perched on a bench on the cabin’s small porch—took another swig from the off-brand soda Dean had brought back from Silver Gate’s one general store. Dean and Cas were drinking the Yellowstone-brand beers in the kitchen, but Sam had declined.  

Sam set the can on the floor and wrapped his arms around his folded legs. The nylon fabric of his rain jacket slid cool and smooth over the bare skin of his arms. In his right hand he held _Basin and Range_ , his index finger stuck in its pages as a temporary bookmark. Inside, he could hear Dean and Cas talking, and the smell of grilled vegetables slid through the window.

Sam gazed at the shadow of the mountains and breathed in the sharp, fresh scent of rain on pine. One long inhale, one long exhale.

His shoulders relaxed without him meaning to. He felt things inside him start to unknot. They seemed to unspool, spill from between his ribs, and roll across the porch and into the wet grass. For all Sam knew, they unrolled all the way into the pine forest and the mountain peaks. Sometimes it felt like he had that much worry wound around his chest.

For ten, twenty minutes he sat in the growing dimness and felt the tight things in his chest continue to slide from him. It left him feeling boneless and warm despite the cold air.

When Dean called him in for dinner, Sam entered the cabin feeling oddly ethereal.

***

 _Hi Kevin,_ Sam composed a text in his head as he lay in bed that night. _It’s raining here. We drove through mountains today and you can see peaks from the front porch. Pretty much the opposite of Kansas. Dean and Cas cooked dinner together. We have beds to sleep in tonight and a heated cabin. I’m going into Yellowstone tomorrow. Speaking honestly, this is probably one of the best days of my life up to this point._

Sam exhaled.

_Probably the only thing that could make it better is if you were here._

Backspace all of that.

***

Sam woke up to the discomfiting sensation of a pillow under his head and actual blankets covering him instead of a sleeping bag. He blinked up at the wood ceiling and tried to remember what he’d been dreaming about. Something nonsensical concerning bears, and when Sam pursued that idea, it dissolved into smoke.

Sam sat up and looked over the dim cabin. Morning sunlight lit up the bear-and-pine patterned curtains a fresh peach color. Sam clambered from the top bunk—he winced at the cold that seeped through his socks—and slid past both Dean and Cas’ sleeping figures to use the bathroom.

When he returned to the kitchen, Sam placed his hands on his hips, surveyed the dishes he’d cleaned last night, glanced again at Dean and Cas, then started digging around for the instant coffee.

By the time Cas emerged from his room—hair stuck up on one side—Sam had boiled a pot of water and was carefully pouring it into one of the mugs they’d found in the cabinet the night before.

“Morning,” Sam said in a low voice. “Sleep okay?”

“Mm.” Cas’ eyes weren’t quite open, so Sam pressed the first mug of coffee into his hands.

“Th’nk you,” Cas mumbled. He took a slight sip and exhaled gustily. Sam prepared his own mug while Cas slowly joined the world of the living, standing in the middle of the room with his socked feet wriggling against the floor.

“Want to go outside?” Sam asked. Cas squinted through the steam of his mug.

“Sure,” he muttered after a moment. “Lemme get a jacket.”

Grinning slightly, Sam opened the front door and froze. He still stood in the doorway when Cas approached, his jacket half on.

“What’s the—oh.”

Sam silently stepped out of Cas’ way so he could see the bison properly. It was a hulking miniature mountain of brown, matted hair. Its liquid black eyes were nearly hidden beneath the small horns and tuft of hair on its head. Every step just _looked_ heavy, and sent its hide shaking. The bison was the only one in sight, munching at the grass in front of the cabins like someone’s pet. It barely flicked an ear at the two men on the porch.

Sam finally broke the silence. “That’s pretty cool.”

The bison snorted, unimpressed.

“I think we’ll be seeing more of these,” Cas closed the door and moved to sit on the bench. He leaned back and took another sip of coffee, though his eyes remained on the bison. “I’ve heard that Yellowstone is teeming with them.”

“That’ll be fun.” Sam took the space next to Cas. They fell into silence, sipping their coffees and watching the bison lumber across the lawn in front of the cabins. At one point, a door three cabins down opened and a child’s delighted shout echoed over to them. Sam looked to find the children he’d seen yesterday tumble from the cabin, their eyes fixed on the bison. They crouched on the porch, gripped the poles, and squished their faces through the spaces between them. A man in a thick sweater and jeans, presumably their father, stood at the doorway.

“He’s not a pet,” the man warned. “No touching. You stay on the front porch, all right? Heather? You hear me?”

The girl, dressed in Winnie the Pooh pajamas and with dirty blond hair straggling over her shoulders, nodded absently. The little boy who looked to be half her age babbled something and pointed with a damp finger.

Cas huffed a laugh, and Sam glanced over at him.

Cas nodded at the boy. “He looks like you did at that age.”

“Really?” Sam scrutinized the little boy again. “Was I that chubby?”

“The hair,” Cas told him. “It’s the curls.”

“Oh.” Sam pursed his lips. “I mean, if you say so.”

“We’ll ask Dean when he wakes up.” Cas took another sip from his coffee.

“Yeah, he’s really sleeping in today.” Sam leaned back to try to peer into the window.

“I think it’s because he has an actual mattress.” Cas sighed and tightened his jacket around his shoulders. “His back’s been getting worse.”

“Yeah.” Sam slumped slightly. “I’ve been noticing that. I think he just keeps downing Tylenol.” A beat of silence in which the bison snorted and the kids squealed, enthralled. “Hang on.” Sam turned to Cas. “Is that why we’re staying here?”

Cas eyed the middle distance and rolled in his lips.

“Cas, c’mon.” Sam nudged his shoulder.

“We’re mainly here because the campsites were in fact full and it was in fact freezing last night.” Cas sniffed. “I might have been looking for an excuse to get Dean on a mattress and this might have been a good one.”

Sam grinned into the rising sun and shook his head.

“Can we buy him a better sleeping pad?” he asked.

“If we can come up with a cunning plan to sneak one in without Dean noticing, I’m all for it.” Cas sighed and sipped at his coffee. “I swear, the day your brother doesn’t put up a fuss over people being nice to him, I’ll eat my boots.”

Sam huffed a light laugh. “I think he’d say the same thing about you buying him things.”

Sam recognized as soon as he said it that he should have kept quiet. Because Cas looked at him with too much concentration, and it was too much like how Sam used to act as messenger boy and counselor to both Dean and Cas when they were in the midst of breaking up. He was done with that.

“You’re probably right.” Cas traced the rim of his mug with an index finger.

Sam kept his eyes on the surface of his coffee and waited. Five minutes. Ten minutes. The bison wandered across the road and the children were called in to eat breakfast.

“I don’t know what we’re doing,” Cas finally said, his voice breaking the silence with a small crack.

Sam shifted. “Trying things out?” he guessed.

Cas shook his head. “I don’t know,” he repeated. “We got somewhere in Lander. We made it clear that we still care. But I don’t know that caring is enough. I’m not…” his words drifted off and he wiped a hand down his face.

Sam slowly shucked his jacket, the sun heating him more than the cool air chilled him.

“They way you feel about Dean,” Sam said as he slung the jacket across his legs. “Is it the same as three, four years ago?”

Cas didn’t reply. Sam looked over at him and found him washed out with sunlight, his eyes screwed up against it. He had his elbows on his knees and his mug in both hands.

“Yes and no,” Cas said. “I’d describe it as…I still care about him as much. He’s still very important to me. But I don’t know that our relationship grew up with us. Because I’m different from what I was four years ago.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “You are.”

“See, and I feel like you know that.” Cas turned to Sam. “I don’t think Dean does.”

Sam drummed his fingers against his mug. “He probably does, but sometimes people act more on what they _want_ than what they _know_. What, you think that he still treats you like your emotionally constipated high school self?”

Cas ducked his head and stifled a snort.

“Is that really how you saw me back then?” he peered up at Sam.

“Sort of.” Sam shrugged one shoulder. “Sometimes. But I’d say you got over that by senior year.”

“Right.” Cas looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Um. Sometimes. Sometimes I think he expects me to be uncommunicative and then just reacts to that, instead of what I’m actually doing.”

“Okay.” Sam nodded slowly. He tried not to make it look like he was scrambling for something intelligent to say. It was just that he’d heard this already. Heard it over weeks and months in ten different variations, and apparently all his carefully thought-out advice had come to nothing. So what was he supposed to say now?

“I don’t know, though.” Cas puttered his lips. “Maybe Dean’s fine and I’m the one who ruined everything.”

“Maybe it’s both of you.” Sam suggested. He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. He didn’t want to sound impatient, but he was afraid that he did anyway. “For what it’s worth, I thought you guys were acting downright normal the last few days.”

“Yes, and that’s it,” Cas said, gesturing a little frantically. “Eventually we’re going to cycle right back into the fighting and it’s going to be awful.”

“That might turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Sam told the ceiling. “Why are you assuming that?”

“Because, Sam, we have _patterns_. But I’m scared to try and discuss those patterns because it might just get us arguing again and then this…this _truce_ might be over. I can tell Dean doesn’t want to discuss them.”

“So you’re putting off talking about things seriously because you’re scared,” Sam interpreted, tilting his head toward Cas again. Cas’ face screwed up.

“Ugh,” Cas groaned. He slumped in the bench. “Sorry,” Cas added after a moment.

“You’re allowed to vent.”

“Yes, but you have to be tired of hearing about this.”

Sam shrugged and made a non-committal noise; it was the closest thing to a “yes” he could give without saying the word outright.

Cas ruffled at his hair, then looked to Sam.

“So how’s Kevin?” he asked, and Sam choked out a laugh.

“Never mind, let’s go back to Dean,” he said, and Cas chuckled.

At that moment, something thumped inside the cabin and a string of “goddamnit”s and “hell”s drifted out to them.

“What happened?” Cas asked as Sam stood and peered through the window.

“I think Dean sat up and hit his head,” Sam reported after trying to assess the situation. Dean caught sight of him and said something with a thoroughly irritated expression.

Cas winced sympathetically and stood to open the door.

“You’re getting the bottom bunk next time, Sam,” Sam heard as he followed Cas into the cabin. “I’m going to have a lump, fucking hell.”

***

After procuring an icepack for Dean and checking out of the cabin, the three of them piled into the car and drove toward Yellowstone’s north entrance. Sam kept taking pictures of the scenery with its dramatic peaks and thick gatherings of pines. Behind him, Cas explained how the entire area had been built by a series of volcanic eruptions, his voice growing continually higher with excitement. Dean didn’t say much, but the way that he kept slowing down and gazing through the windshield told Sam enough.

After officially entering the park, Cas informed them that their first order of business would be nabbing one of the first-come, first-serve camping spots while people were still checking out. It took some doing. First they had to have a brief argument over which camping site they should chose and, moreover, what the fastest route would be to get there.

“Damn big park,” Dean commented half an hour after they’d chosen their route and were only three quarters of the way there.

“Biggest in the nation,” Cas commented vaguely, immediately followed by, “Oh! Columnar basalt!”

“We’ll come back,” Dean replied. Cas made a low sound and twisted around to watch the black wall of rock disappear behind them.

Sam leaned forward as they rounded a bend.

“Hey!” he grabbed at Dean’s arm. “Elk!”

Indeed, a small collection of cars, alongside an army of tourists with cameras, all centered on an elk grazing not ten yards away. Dean slowed the car down so he could pull over, and Sam and Cas rolled down their windows.

“Dude, he just does not care,” Dean commented as Sam snapped several photos in quick succession. They ended up watching the elk until it ambled into the trees and out of sight. The tourists slowly wandered back to their cars and drove away.

Dean asked Cas whether that had been as cool as the columnar basalt, and Cas replied that it had come close.

***

[Sam] _Hey, finally have a signal here. How did the presentation go?_

[Kevin] _It went great! Crowley told me I was making progress, so that’s practically a glowing review. Where are you guys?_

[Sam] _We’re setting up our tent in Yellowstone :D_

[Kevin] _Jealous. So, so jealous. Wanna see what I’m doing today?_

That was followed by a picture of piles of files and papers.

[Sam] _Looks thrilling._

[Kevin] _It’s research for a policy on smoking restrictions. Actually pretty fascinating. Slogging, but fascinating._

[Sam] _You’ll have to keep me up to date on how that goes then._

[Kevin] _So when can we actually talk? It’s been at least a week._

[Sam] _Tonight? I think I’ll be busy the rest of today._

[Kevin] _I’m holding you to that, Winchester_

“Sam!” Dean called out. “Tell Kevin it can wait, we’re trying to get out of here.”

 [Sam] _Yeah, definitely later. Dean’s yelling at me now to help._

[Kevin] _Probably safer. Crowley’ll have my head if he sees me texting during work hours. I want pictures, okay?_

[Sam] _Signed, sealed, and delivered._

Sam stuffed the phone into his back pockets and approached Dean and Cas. If they saw how doofy his smile was, they didn’t mention it.


	6. Chapter 6

“So you’re sure that bears won’t bother a group of three,” Dean said as he pulled into the small parking lot next to the trailhead.

Cas and Sam conspicuously exchanged a look.

“Hey,” Dean snapped, turning off the engine. “The map says the trail is bear heavy, okay? Bears can kill you.”

“We’ll be fine.” Cas climbed out of the car and squinted at the plains surrounding them. The trail appeared as a ribbon of brown in a sea of short grasses, weaving through small swells of hills before disappearing into a distant collection of pines. According to the map, it rounded the small peak standing above them and looped back.

“Here.” Sam attached the bear bell they’d purchased to his backpack. “Extra precaution.” Dean eyed the bear bell with nothing bearing resemblance to confidence.

But eventually, any thought of bear fell to the wayside as they started hiking the trail. The grasses rippled in the wind beneath a low-hanging sky, thick with clouds that kept the temperature downright cool. Several times, they passed small gatherings of bison, their small, stumbling calves watching the hikers with wary curiosity. The adults largely ignored them, though they kept their distance. They had to avoid the buffalo chips, but other than that, Sam considered it a good trail.

When they reached the tree line, the light filtering down to them became dappled green and gold, and the path _shushed_ with dry pine needles. Sam kept tilting his head back to admire the way the canopy stretched over them.

Gradually, Sam began to fall back and watch Dean and Cas drift closer and closer. Their hands kept brushing casually, and they spoke in low voices about, as far as Sam gathered, entirely inconsequential things. It was nice to see, and it made Sam wonder whether Cas was just being paranoid. Who said that they had to fall back into the arguing, really? Maybe they could just…make it work this time.

“What do you mean, ‘follow the scarp’?” Dean’s voice filtered back to him, and Sam lifted his head. Dean and Cas had stopped and now examined what looked like an exposed slope of bare earth.

“It’s a small fault line, basically,” Cas explained in a bright voice. “Maybe it appears again farther that way.”

“Farther into the forest and away from the trail,” Dean clarified.

“We have a topographic map,” Cas protested. “I almost never follow trails when I do field work, anyway.”

“You sure?” Sam felt he had to ask.

“Yes,” Cas said. “Come on, it’s fine.” He started walking through the brush.

Dean looked over at Sam, who could only shrug. Dean huffed, adjusted his backpack, and followed Cas. Sam took the rear and glanced behind him compulsively as they disappeared into the trees’ shade.

***

“We’re _lost_.”

“We’re not.”

“We are, Cas, fucking admit it.”

“Guys,” Sam tried for the fifth time.

“Sam, do you think we’re lost?” Dean demanded.

“I think we need to find the trail again,” Sam said diplomatically and went back to studying the map over Cas’ shoulder.

“We _would_ have a trail,” Dean continued, “if it wasn’t for Mr. oh, I’m a geologist guys, I abandon trails all the time, it’s fine, don’t worry about it, _I’m so fucking smart_.”

“You could stop screeching and help us,” Cas said in a flat voice.

“First you admit that you got us into this.”

Cas’ lips tightened.

Sam surreptitiously rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to tell Cas to just admit that he’d screwed up. Judging by the way Cas was squinting at the map, he probably no longer knew where they were. That, and he kept touching at the pocket with the bear spray, as if to be sure that it was still there. Sam wouldn’t call himself nervous yet. Just…alert.

Dean tugged at the map and Cas tugged it back with a small scowl. Sam left them to it and checked his cell phone signal again. Nothing.

“I just think if we can find this creek,” Cas said, tracing a thin blue line on the map, “we can follow it to the main trail again. And based on the way this hill is sloping, I’ll bet that it’s down in that direction.”

“Fine.” Dean looked away and wiped at the side of his face. “Fine,” he repeated. “You always know better, right? You’re the one with the fucking degree.”

“Dean…”

Sam glanced back in time to see Dean walking downhill, Cas with an arm half raised after him. Both had expressions that made something inside Sam clench up. Cas lowered his hand and looked at Sam helplessly.

Sam shrugged, and then followed Dean down the hill. He didn’t trust himself to say anything helpful.

***

The hill did not end in a creek. Cas blinked at the underbrush where they should have found a creek then turned to the back of Dean’s head. The set of his shoulders made Cas think that he was close to snapping. Sam just looked hunted, hunching into himself and trying to make himself seem smaller.

“All right.” Cas slowly pulled the map back out and unfolded it with fingers that only trembled a little. He _knew_ how to read a map, damn it. He was just letting nerves get to him.

Cas mentally shut out the Winchesters as he knelt and spread the map over the leaf litter. Out came his compass, and he focused on orienting the map to north. Someone, Dean probably, started to ask him something, and Cas waved a hand to silence him. If they’d followed this incline, then it should—

Something jostled at Cas shoulder and it sent him off-balance enough for him to half topple over. He caught himself on one hand; it sank into moist soil and dry pine needles. A stick dug into his palm.

“Dean!” Sam’s voice echoed from somewhere above him. Cas blinked up at a figure silhouetted by the light filtering through the canopy.

Dean’s face screwed up as if against a harsh light, and he shook slightly. One hand clenched like he’d been considering a punch. Cas wished he’d do it. It’d be infinitely better than this deep silence that built up like water against a bad dam.

“Don’t push me,” Cas said in a flat voice. “We’re not children.” He could feel himself retreating into that numb place. As if Dean’s effusion of emotion triggered Cas to pack his away and counterattack with a terrible frigidness. It was an odd place, and Cas never decided whether he liked it.

“Goddamnit Cas,” Dean said, and his voice sounded close to choking. “Fucking admit that you screwed up.” Cas sank deeper into himself.

Why, he wondered, did Dean have to make himself so emotionally vulnerable like this? Smearing his heart on his sleeve in messy blotches. All it did was open himself up and give Cas too much power, and experience had shown that Cas didn’t know how to not hurt people when they exposed their underbellies like this. (That probably explained Meg. She never became vulnerable without making it clear that she refused to let Cas damage her.)

_Be like Meg,_ Cas wanted to tell Dean. _Stop looking so hurt. I can’t know that I can hurt you. Don’t give me that much power._

“No one hands you blame except for yourself.” Cas slowly stood and looked down at the map that had been knocked askew. He’d have to reorient it.

“That’s not true,” Dean bit out. He looked mildly stricken. Cas knew his targets.

“Yes, it is,” Cas said, picking up the map and compass. “Fine, I got us lost. I thought I knew where we were. If you would stop attacking me, I might still be able to get us back to the trail.”

Dean made some indistinguishable noise, and Cas didn’t dare look in his direction. Didn’t dare look in Sam’s direction. He didn’t want to see what he’d dragged from the Winchesters this time.

Orient to north. Find elevation. Look around. Where were the troughs?

(Sam was speaking to Dean in a low voice)

The main peak was behind them, so—

(Dean was shaking his head)

“Over here.” Cas straightened and started walking. It took several seconds for footsteps to follow him. Cas had to spend some time confirming that he heard two sets. After that he focused on following the topography. Topography was safe. Topography was too old and slow to care about him and his human emotions.

They walked in complete silence for ten, fifteen minutes. Neither Sam nor Dean questioned it when Cas led them through shallow gullies or over small hills.

The trail appeared suddenly when they crested one such hill. Smooth, brown, and well-treaded. Cas’ shoulders relaxed. Sam and Dean pulled up a little beside him. Dean started loping down the hill to reach it, and Sam followed. Cas took up the rear as they kept going along the path. His usefulness was done; now his job was to stay quiet. Cas walked in a kind of haze, caught between the dredges of angry numbness and growing, deepening guilt. It seeped into him like increasing sobriety in the early hours of the morning, after the house has been trashed and the bathroom floor vomited upon.

At some point, Cas realized that Sam was falling back to walk alongside him. Cas kept his eyes on his boots, but eventually glanced up at him. Sam’s face was a thundercloud. Cas dropped his eyes again.

“That wasn’t okay,” Sam said.

Cas inhaled before replying, “I know.”

Dean walked far enough ahead that he couldn’t have heard them. He kept turning his head to the side in a way that made Cas think he was trying anyway.

“You don’t get to buy boots and rent a cabin and pretend that it proves that you care,” Sam continued. He kept his eyes forward, and his hands curled around his backpack straps. “It doesn’t prove anything, not when you treat him like that.”

Sam had his eyes fixed on the space ahead of him before he slid them over to Cas. The judgment Cas found there made him want to shrink.

“It’s not like Dean doesn’t do dumb things, okay?” Sam plowed forward, and he’d started blinking harder. “He shouldn’t have freaked out. He never accepts help because he’s terrified by how much he wants it, and he cares about people so much that he ends up pushing everyone away or stifling them trying to hold onto them. It can be hard to put up with. I get that.”

Cas glanced at Dean compulsively.

“But everything just now? You refusing to take responsibility and acting like you were the victim? That’s on you.” Sam ran a hand through his hair, gripping at it before letting it go. “If Dean doesn’t want to talk to you for a while, I’d understand.”

“I understand,” Cas breathed. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not the one you need to apologize to.” Sam shot him one last glance before picking up his pace and rejoining Dean. Cas slowed, eventually came to a stop. He watched Sam and Dean round a bend and disappear from view. Then he went into a squat and let his hands hang between his legs. He stared at the ground. He listened to himself breathe, to the air shushing through the pine trees.

When Cas lifted his head, any trace of Sam and Dean had disappeared. Cas stood and started walking again.

When he saw two figures down the path about half an hour later, he wondered why they looked so intently at the clearing to their right. Neither Sam nor Dean reacted as Cas approached. Only when Cas tread on a stick lying on the path did Dean jerk his head over. His eyes were wide, and he pointed silently to the clearing. Cas followed his finger, and his breath caught in his throat.

A grizzly, cinnamon brown and with bulking shoulders, meandered at the far edge of the clearing, snuffling at the undergrowth.

It had the same sense of heaviness in its gait as the bison did, but this was an apex predator, so it walked with an extra layer of nonchalance. It was far enough away and looked distracted enough that Cas didn’t feel the immediate need to leave. But he could feel his instincts rising to the surface, basic fight or flight reactions starting up. He pulled the bear spray from his pocket and slowly placed his index finger on the trigger.

By the time the grizzly slowly disappeared into the trees on the other side of the clearing, Cas’ joints hurt from how little he’d allowed them to move. Sam visibly relaxed and looked at the other two.

“We were lucky,” he said.

Neither Dean nor Cas disagreed.

***

When they finally reached the car again, Cas’ legs hurt and his brain was beginning to pound against his skull. Too many things piling on him in one day; he wanted to curl up somewhere dark and silent and not deal with any of it.

Except then: “Can I have the backseat?” Sam asked him in a low voice, and Cas didn’t have a leg to stand on to say no.

“You feeling okay, Sammy?” Dean asked when Sam dumped his backpack in the trunk and sprawled in the backseat—as much as a person his size _could_ sprawl. It was the first thing Cas had heard Dean say for hours. His voice came out unevenly.

“Yeah,” Sam said, one forearm covering his eyes and the other hand splayed over his stomach. Cas paused and automatically looked over the car’s roof to catch Dean’s eye. To his mild shock, Dean did the same. And despite everything, Cas read _He’s frustrated again_ in Dean’s expression. Loud and clear.

“We’re headed back to the tent,” Dean told Sam, and swung himself into the driver’s seat. “We can bum around the rest of today.”

Sam didn’t reply, but he did nod his head incrementally.

Dean started the engine and pulled them slowly from the small patch of dirt that served as the parking lot. Dean smelled like fresh air, pine, and dry summer sweat. He looked weary and dusty. Cas leaned back in his seat and tilted his head up toward the Impala’s ceiling.

The drive back to the campsite was a long one; they had to cross a good portion of the park to get there. Dean tuned the radio to a soft rock station. Cas saw more interesting geological features, but knew better than to say anything.

When he twisted around in his seat, he found that Sam’s forearm had slipped from his eyes and that his face had slackened with sleep. He looked incredibly young sprawled on that seat with afternoon sunlight splashing across his body and his hair sprawled in a hundred different directions. His limbs made sinuous tributaries leading to his torso. Cas leaned his cheek against the top of the bench seat and watched.

“He asleep?” Dean asked in a low voice. Almost a whisper.

“Yes,” Cas whispered back.

Dean’s mouth flickered up at its edges.

“Soft rock.” He gestured to the radio. “Always knocks him right out.”

It was as if the words gave Cas permission to look at Dean properly, and he did so almost hungrily. They were driving through Lamar Valley: an unrolling of green and yellow grasses dotted by bodies of water and bison. The clouds had rolled away around noon, and the sky hung an impossible blue. The Impala window framed Dean’s head, and the blur of blue and yellow-green made the backdrop. Cas stared because he couldn’t help it.

“You belong on the plains,” he said. The words slipped from him too easily. Dean glanced over.

“What?”

“Kansas. You always seem to belong there. You remind me of plains.” He needed to stop.

“So I’m flat and boring?” Dean asked.

“No,” Cas said. He tried to organize his thoughts into words.

Steady, forgiving landscape with gentle hills, like hands cupping soil and water. Somewhere that offered itself as a home to creatures; they flocked there because the living was easy, the rivers ran strong, and the roots dived deep. A place thick with life. Somewhere where seeds grew earnestly because they were nourished so well.

A small, sharp hill rose beyond Dean.

Cas was more akin to a mountain, he decided. Something sharp and too dangerous for most people to want to tackle. Somewhere that had life, but made it fight to be there. Nice to look at from afar, maybe. But none of the plains’ kindness or their forgiveness. Too easy to get hurt there.

Maybe that explained them, Cas thought distantly.

“You zoning out on me?” Dean asked.

“Yes,” Cas admitted. He gave up trying to voice things without sounding odd. “Dean, I’m sorry,” he said.

Dean heaved a sigh, slowed and turned on his right turn signal.

“Shouldn’t have gotten so pissy.”

“I shouldn’t have led us off the path.” Cas twisted his hands in his lap. “I was mad at myself and sort of nervous, so I took it out on you.”

Dean shook his head, mouth bunched up on one side.

“Man, you wouldn’t even admit you’d fucked up.”

“I know.”

“That’s a pattern, you know. You have this thing with pride.”

“I _know_.”

“Just so we’re clear.” Dean fell silent. Cas didn’t know whether he was forgiven. Dean probably hadn’t decided yet.

***

By the third day in Yellowstone, Sam insisted that rhyolite and obsidian were all duly fascinating, but were they really going to come to Yellowstone and not see Old Faithful? Cas had admitted that, crowds aside, the geysers were the fun part of visiting a super volcano.

“I saw a documentary about that,” Dean said as they hiked across the parking lot toward the geyser field. “It’s supposed to blow soon, right?”

“It’s overdue, yes.” Cas nodded. The smell of sulfur—until now a vague scent in the air and an unfortunate taste in the water—swelled around them. Beyond the collection of buildings and lodges, he could see plumes of vapor.

“The lake is actually part of the caldera from the last eruption,” Cas continued. “It was massive; the ash alone would easily cover most of the Western U.S.”

“I think they made a movie about that,” Sam mused.

“Oh yeah, _Day After Tomorrow_.” Dean grinned. “That was a good one.”

“Apocalypse movies make me fidgety,” Cas admitted, and then grinned and threw up one shoulder when Dean poked at him and called him a worrywart.

Sam and Dean had been treating Cas downright normally yesterday and today, and Cas was duly grateful and carefully did not suggest any more deviances from their hiking trails. He figured it was the best he could have hoped for.

“Hey, if Yellowstone erupts while we’re here, at least we’ll die fast and not have to deal with post-apocalypse survival,” Dean pointed out.

“Silver linings,” Sam laughed.

They cut through two buildings—one a diner and the other yet another gift shop—and stood before what Cas could only call a moonscape. The grass and trees sputtered away in favor of a gray-white-yellow landscape of boardwalks, craters, and steam. The scent of sulfur was overwhelming now.

The three of them walked to the sidewalk and joined the steady stream of people. Sam had his camera out already and was snapping pictures. As they neared the first set of geysers, they could see the pits and cones bubbling with boiling water. Tourists speaking a babble of different languages peered over the edges of the boardwalks constructed just above the ashy soil.

“This is unbelievable,” Sam said as they delved into the geyser field. “It’s like it belongs on another planet.” He took a picture of long ropy strands of green and ochre that the little placard explained as extremophiles.

“Look at that one.” Dean pointed, and they all looked up at a cone sputtering water several yards into the air. It had a whole gaggle of tourists—most of whom, judging by the language, were Japanese—snapping pictures. Sam picked up his pace, camera already held out.

“He’s lucky he’s so tall,” Dean murmured to Cas, who had to stifle a laugh. They kept their ambling pace along the boardwalk, moving aside to allow children and faster-paced couples to pass them. Cas lifted his head to peer at a sinfully blue sky and heaved a deep breath.

“How do you do that?” Dean asked. “It reeks.”

“You’re not used to it?” Cas asked.

“No, not really.” Dean scrunched his nose as they walked through a plume of vapor. “I’m just glad we’re not here in the middle of summer.”

“It _is_ the middle of summer,” Cas pointed out.

“I’m talking about July and August, when it gets really hot and nasty.”

“Mm,” Cas hummed. They’d been on the road for nearly a month, he realized. July would be on them soon.

“Did you ever hear back from Garth’s uncle?” Cas suddenly asked.

Dean nodded. “He got through to me yesterday when you were out looking for the showers. We chatted a little. I have an interview set up with him in August.”

“That’s good,” Cas said. Dean gave him a sideways expression that made Cas frown slightly. “What?” he asked.

“No lecture about going to college?” Dean’s tone was only half joking.

“That’s Sam’s bag.” Cas stuck his hands into his pockets. “I only get involved if he asks me to.”

“Jesus Christ, between you two…” Dean shook his head and didn’t finish the thought. They caught up to the large geyser spurting its water high above them, but chose to stand on the edge of the crowd. Sam stood a good head above the Japanese tourists, long hair blowing in the stiff breeze.

“Y’know, I think we did a good job with that kid.” Dean leaned against a rail and jutted his chin toward Sam. Cas leaned next to him.

“I’m not convinced that you and I were necessarily the parents in all this,” he admitted, watching Sam exchange what looked like a few pleasantries with an elderly man in a blue cap. “Remember that Halloween?”

“Oh geeze,” Dean tilted his face up to the sky. “One time, Cas. It was _one time_.”

“It happened on at least four separate Halloweens and I have photographic proof.”

“Psh.” Dean threw up a hand.

Cas had to direct his grin toward the geyser again, but he did indulge in a small elbow to Dean’s side. Dean elbowed back much harder, which elicited a “Hey!” and a small scuffle.

“Either of you fall into a pit of boiling water, I’m not going to bother driving you to the hospital,” Sam said as he approached them. He looked pink-faced, wind-swept, and satisfied with whatever he’d captured on film.

“Nah, we’re not the ones who would fall in.” Dean threw up a defensive arm and edged away from Cas. “You’d do it trying to get a freaking picture.”

“Sure, Dean,” Sam said, looping his camera strap over his shoulder. “Should we keep going? I want to circle back in time to catch Old Faithful.”

“You gonna take a selfie with it?” Dean asked as he followed Sam.

“Yup,” Sam called back.

“Send it to Kevin?”

“Screw you, Dean.”

Dean cackled.

***

By the time they approached Old Faithful, a healthy crowd had already collected. The sun was low in the sky and sent a pleasant golden cast over the scene. Teenagers sat cross-legged at the edge of the boardwalk while kids play-chased each other and got told off by their parents. Cas sat on a wooden bench between Sam and Dean, and they were just close enough for shoulders to brush. Sam felt reassuring; Dean was comforting. Cas stretched his legs in front of him and exhaled slowly.

Just fifteen seconds after 5:43 p.m., the geyser began to gurgle and spurt. The volume of the crowd’s chatter rose with the water. Cas tipped his head back to watch as the water shot higher and higher, catching the gold-peach cast of the late afternoon. Steam blew with the wind and enveloped those a little to the right of where they sat.

Sam eventually stood to round the boardwalk and get a better angle of Old Faithful as it pulsed with jets of boiling water.

“So.” Dean leaned toward Cas. “You said the water is being heated by lava?”

“Magma,” Cas automatically said. “It’s still belowground, so it’s magma. But yes, this whole area is a volcanic hotspot, so the magma is much closer to the surface than usual. It boils the groundwater and the pressure sends the water and steam shooting through the geyser’s internal plumbing.”

“So why’s this one so regular?” Dean nodded at Old Faithful.

Cas shrugged and leaned back. “I don’t think we know that yet. I’m sure there’s literature on it, but I don’t work with volcanology much.”

“Wow, and you call yourself a geologist.” Dean shook his head. “Disgraceful.”

“I explained the Yellowstone Canyon.”

“Nah. Not good enough.” Dean side-eyed Cas and gave him a shit-eating smile. Cas shook his head and tilted his head up again, eyes squinting a little to see the stream through the sunlight.

“Hey, Cas?” Dean asked after a moment. Cas turned toward him. “Can I kiss you?”

Cas blinked.

“What?”

“That thing with the mouths.”

“No I mean…” Cas shook his head, his brow furrowing.

“What?” Dean shifted on the bench.

“Dean, I…just a few days ago…” Cas gestured helplessly.

“I mean, do you want me to say something sappy about how I’ve forgiven you by now? I won’t enjoy it, but I’ll say it if you want.”

Cas’ stomach clenched.

“You’re too forgiving.” He slid his eyes over to Old Faithful again so he wouldn’t have to see the way Dean’s eyes crinkled in the corner. “I hurt you.”

“I can say the exact same thing.” Dean was silent for a moment. “It’s just that you look sort of gorgeous right now and I want to kiss you. Also, I’m pretty sure that Old Faithful is one of those places like Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon. People propose there and hold hands and shit.”

“And shit,” Cas echoed, feeling the grin slide onto his face. “I think you’re right.” He looked over at Dean properly and slumped slightly. “Yes, Dean, you can kiss me.”

Dean’s face softened, and he brushed at the fringe of Cas’ hair before he leaned forward to capture Cas’ bottom lip between his. It was the second time they’d kissed since breaking up. Last time had been desperate. This felt more like the casual way they used to exchange kisses. Something in it felt light-hearted and kind. Cas brought a hand up to slide into Dean’s hair, and Dean made a pleased sound.

The wind changed direction enough to send the geyser’s spray in their direction. The sulfur scent wasn’t too strong; not strong enough to ruin the way that the water misted over them and made Cas laugh right into Dean’s mouth.

***

Sam only reappeared after Dean and Cas had pulled apart and enquired after exploring the collection of buildings for a decent meal. They ended up ambling along the sidewalk, and almost unsurprisingly, Dean’s hand ended up entwined with Cas’. Cas kept his grip firm, as if Dean might escape him.

They found an affordable cafeteria with entirely edible food, even if Sam described the salads as limp. After that, they wandered to the Old Faithful Inn, the historic lodge that presided over the landscape like a wooden castle.

The interior bustled with more tourists. A huge fireplace stood at one end of the room, above which hung a large, stylized clock with a ponderously swinging pendulum. Large armchairs surrounded the fireplace, in which people read or chatted.

Sam and Cas ended up standing among the couches to tilt their heads up and gaze at the soaring interior of the lodge. Floors stacked on one another, ending in a small platform right below the roof. Dean eventually had to snap their attention to the fact that they were getting in the way.

“Hey, look, a gift shop.” Sam pointed and started toward it without looking back.

“We already looked at one,” Dean protested, but trailed after Sam nevertheless.

“Yeah, but we haven’t bought anything yet.” Sam peered at a stack of t-shirts near the front of the shop. “C’mon, Dean, just something like a keychain.”

“It’s all overpriced.” Dean glanced at Cas as if to seek some backup. Cas shrugged.

“It supports the park,” he said. Dean rolled his eyes.

Nevertheless, five minutes later, Cas watched Dean analyze a collection of Yellowstone shot glasses that “would make a good gift for Charlie, shut up, Cas.”

“Shutting up,” Cas said serenely, and wandered over to where Sam perused the book section. He had a massive book in his hands and slowly flipped the pages.

“This would make a good coffee table book,” Sam told Cas as he approached, and tilted the book so Cas could see the two-page spread of bison hunched in a pure white field of snow.

“It’s beautiful,” Cas said.

“It’s expensive.” Sam suddenly slapped the book shut and replaced it on the shelf. “Here, I saw stickers and keychains over in the corner. You don’t have a Yellowstone sticker yet, right?”

“No.” Cas smiled slightly. “Should I let you pick it out?”

“I can advise you.” Sam grinned over his shoulder. They found a spinning rack with a whole selection of magnets, key chains, postcards, and vinyl stickers. Sam and Cas debated the merits of a large, colorful sticker featuring an illustration of Old Faithful. Cas liked it. Sam thought another one showcasing a herd of bison was more representative of the park as a whole. Cas acknowledged this point and ended up buying both.

Sam joined Cas at the register with two keychains and three magnets, and at the last minute grabbed a pack of postcards.

“You feel like our fridge doesn’t have enough magnets or something?” Dean asked as Sam’s purchases were rung up.

“Gifts for Bobby and Ellen.” Sam pointed to a magnet of a grizzly bear. “And then one for Jo, and one for our kitchen. Then a keychain for me, and a keychain for Kevin.”

Dean’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t offer further comment. Once Sam and Cas had been rung up, he suggested that they explore the upper levels of the lodge. They did so, passing people relaxing in more armchairs that overlooked the main floor. They walked three floors, then found that the uppermost floors were cordoned off.

“I mean, we could sneak up,” Dean suggested mildly, but Sam told him not to be stupid.

Instead they wandered back to a set of double doors that led to a large porch with several tables and rows of benches overlooking Old Faithful and the rest of the geyser field. Dean told Sam and Cas to go ahead and sit then disappeared back into the lodge.

“He saw the bar,” Sam predicted, shoving his bag under the bench and letting his long legs sprawl. Cas pulled out his blue Nalgene and the new stickers and, after some discussion with Sam, placed the Old Faithful sticker on the water bottle. His bottle was becoming nicely crowded now, boasting of the places they’d been so far. Cas ran his fingers over bold fonts and bright graphics. They’d done a lot in one month.

Eventually, Cas stuck the water bottle back under the bench and watched the sky edge into pinks and oranges. When he glanced over at Sam again, he had his head tilted back and his eyes half lidded. He looked at peace. It was a look Cas saw more frequently these days.

“Sam?” Cas asked.

“Hm?”

“Are you happy right now?”

Sam huffed a laugh and sat up straighter.

“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Pretty happy, actually. I mean, I’m not sure why I wouldn’t be.”

“I’m just afraid that with all the drama…” Cas waved a hand to finish that thought. “I just wanted to make sure you were…I mean, with Ruby.”

Sam sighed, and Cas wondered whether he should have said the name at all.

“It’s still there.” Sam kept his gaze on the geysers. “I still think about her more than I should. But it helps to be out here with you guys. I mean, I don’t have time to wallow when there’s all this to look at.” Sam’s mouth tilted up. “Kevin helps too.”

“That’s good.” Cas nodded. He made a mental note to see if he could get Sam to introduce Kevin to him when they were all back in Lawrence.

“That’s not to say there’s not an…I still don’t like what happened in Lander. It scares me that I can screw up like that—“

“Sam.” Cas leaned forward slightly. “That’s not anything to blame yourself for. You don’t need to feel guilty for reacting to something that hurt you.”

Sam lifted one shoulder briefly.

“I just don’t like what I do when I’m angry,” he said. “I mean, honestly? Thank god that we were in the middle of a forest a few days ago. I didn’t have anything to escape to. I had to yell at you and Dean instead.”

Cas fell silent with a small sting in his gut.

“Sorry about that, by the way,” Sam added.

“Sorry?” Cas frowned. “You had every right to scold me.”

“Yeah, but…” Sam fiddled with his phone. “I still feel bad about it.”

Cas shook his head. Only Sam Winchester.

“Maybe you should try that again, next time you’re frustrated,” Cas suggested carefully. “Maybe you ought to be speaking up before you turn to…other things.”

Sam leaned his head in his hand and sighed. “You’re probably right,” he said. A moment of silence. “Hey, Old Faithful’s starting up again.” Cas looked over and found spurts of water shooting into the air. Several people around them pulled out cameras, but Sam kept contemplatively watching the geyser. Cas ended up watching him rather than Old Faithful, as if to find confirmation of Sam’s claim.

“Oh, cool.” Dean’s voice rose behind them, and Sam and Cas looked to find Dean approaching them with three ice cream cones balanced in two hands. He looked at Old Faithful with a bright grin.

“Where were you?” Sam asked a little incredulously. Dean lifted the ice creams.

“The ice cream shop? Down in the lower level? Did you not see it?”

“No, yeah, I just thought you were at the bar.”

“I mean, if you don’t want yours, just say so. Cas and I can split it,” Dean said.

“Har har.” Sam accepted the mint chocolate chip; he’d proclaimed it his favorite flavor back in fifth grade and hadn’t changed his tune since.

“Here.” Dean handed Cas the second cone, and Cas took a moment to recognize the flavor.

“Dean,” he sighed, and failed to hide the little bubbles of laughter rising inside him. Rocky Road. Typical Dean, really, to not let a flimsy, stupid pun like that go unused.

“What?” Dean asked innocently, busying himself with his cookie dough ice cream.

“What?” Sam echoed, glancing over. He took a moment, and then snorted.

“Do you not like that flavor?” Dean asked. “I can switch with you, I guess.”

“Dean—“ Cas couldn’t finish, he was starting to laugh too hard.

“Though I’m not sure why you’d switch,” Dean continued. “Rocky Road is like the perfect mix of flavors. It’s marshmallow and nut coarse grains in a…a matrix of chocolate.” Cas was doubled over now. “Poorly sorted,” Dean added. “Which must mean an active depositional environment.”

“Lord,” Cas coughed out. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You should be impressed that I just recited all that.” Dean was grinning when Cas lifted his head. He had a smudge of ice cream on the corner of his mouth and the corners of his eyes were crinkled.

Still shaking his head, Cas sat up properly. “I am,” he promised.

He started in on his ice cream. They watched Old Faithful churn away, then sputter back into silence.

The sky darkened even more, and the land around them grew dim and indistinct. Lights appeared on the porch, and the low chatter of people flowed around the three of them as they discussed their next destination after Yellowstone, whether the tent had a tear, and if the big black birds cawing away on the roof were ravens or crows.

Cas ended up with his head on Dean’s shoulder, Sam’s leg pressed against his own, and the thought that he wished he could preserve this moment in amber.


	7. Chapter 7

They meandered through the park over the next few days. As if the evening at Old Faithful had opened things between them even more, Cas made a habit of brushing his lips to Dean’s in the quiet moments on the trail, when they were fetching water from the water pumps, when Sam sat in the backseat and Cas could lean across unobtrusively.

A large part of Dean, the loudest part of him, reveled in it. This, it insisted, was it. This was them drifting back together for sure after a year of separation. They’d return to Kansas, Cas would move back into the apartment, and they would be happy. Dean would get the job with Garth’s uncle and work hard and save up money. Enough to—

Dean sighed suddenly and pulled at his mouth.

“What?” Sam looked up from the guidebook spread across his lap. “Are supervolcanoes not interesting anymore?”

“You’re fine, I was just…” Dean waved a vague hand and avoided looking in the rear-view mirror. He might catch a glimpse of Cas.

Sam dove back into reading aloud from the guidebook and Dean watched the white lines of the road stream past him. John Denver rumbled from the speakers. Cas (the little hippie) had that old Denver cassette—where he got it, Dean had no idea—and had managed to guilt Dean into playing it several times over the course of the last few weeks. Dean knew most of the songs by now, and found himself singing them when he wasn’t paying attention.

Dean let his thoughts drift back toward him and Cas. He ought to know better at this point, really. This had been his attitude just a week and a half ago, after that first night in Sinks Canyon. And then he and Cas had spiraled right back to their usual crap. How many times had they cycled through this? Arguments, then forgiveness, then honeymoons, then a bitter word here, a vindictive jab there, and they ended up on a steep slide right back into stilted conversations and refusing to make eye contact.

It reminded Dean of his dad after Mary had died. Just a constant, sickening cycle of anger and forgiveness; one night of empty bottles being thrown and the next night a trip to the movies because their dad was sorry, he really was, he’d never do it again, he was turning his life around. Dean had been sick of it by the time he reached middle school, and he supposed he ought to be sick of it now.

But now,it was Cas. Cas didn’t do anything like throw empty bottles. He just _said_ things that made Dean’s stomach turn sour and his chest clench up. And Dean attacked right back with ill-thought words and physical jabs and oh lord, Dean wasn’t any better than John, was he?

Dean’s hand dove almost instinctively for his pocket and the rock Cas had given him. The jagged edges soothed him as he ran the pads of his fingers along them. Cas used to give Dean rocks all the time back in school. Dean still had most of them in a shoebox in his closet. All except a huge chunk of green-black mineral ( _not_ rock, a _mineral,_ Dean had been told multiple times) that Cas had given to him once for Christmas, proclaiming that it was called olivine and that it made him think of Dean’s eyes. That still sat on Dean’s desk.

“That’s wrong.” Cas suddenly appeared at Dean’s shoulder to peer at the book in Sam’s hands. “We saw that formation yesterday. There’s not way that’s overturned bedding.”

Dean laughed without meaning to. He could feel Cas side-eying him, and turned his head enough to offer a smile.

***

They could only stay in Yellowstone so long, in the end, and soon they found themselves on their last night in the park. Tomorrow they would hit up the Grand Tetons, and then maybe continue west.

“Or more south,” Sam mused. “Arizona and New Mexico have a lot going on.”

“Utah,” Cas reminded him.

The three of them were walking along the West Thumb of the Yellowstone Lake: a massive, ocean-like body of water that sprawled across the middle of the park. They had opted to camp near it for the last few nights, and Dean was glad that they were. The lake kept them cool during the day and warm at night.

“Oh, right, Utah.” Sam bobbed his head. He walked a little ahead of Dean and Cas, hands in his pockets and boots scuffing at the sand and small boulders. “Zion’s there. We have to check out Zion.”

Next to Dean, Cas hummed in agreement. He was silhouetted by the lake; his lashes were pencil strokes of dark curves.

They walked for another fifteen minutes before Sam announced that he was going to head back to the tent.

“We’ll catch up,” Cas said, and Dean didn’t bother to protest. Sam caught Dean’s eye briefly, then turned away with a light shrug and a good night to both of them. Dean had to give him credit: not one joke that they had an extra tent sitting in the trunk.

Dean and Cas kept walking through the growing dimness, long after Sam’s receding footsteps had disappeared. Gradually, Dean became aware that the sand beneath his boots was growing firmer and that the grains made a more pebbly sound as he tread on them. He looked down and realized that the cream-tan sand had darkened to black.

“Where is this?” he asked Cas, because he had no doubt that Cas knew exactly where they’d been headed the whole time, and could tell him the geologic history of the area. With footnotes.

“An obsidian beach,” Cas informed him. He looked mildly awkward. “I wanted to surprise you.”

“I’m surprised,” Dean promised. He paused and bent down to sift his hand through countless black pebbles. They felt hot against his skin. “Obsidian is when lava freezes really quickly,” Dean all but recited, recalling evenings spent helping Cas study for tests. “It’s glassy.”

“Mm,” Cas agreed, and Dean straightened. He kept one pebble in his hand and examined it in the evening light. It went into the same pocket as the one that held the granite.

They kept walking and neither seemed inclined to turn around. Therefore, Dean wasn’t surprised, not really, when Cas slowed to a stop. They looked over the lake, at the way the setting sun lit it brilliant colors. Cas tilted his head toward Dean, and Dean took the cue. He pressed his lips to Cas’ and sighed; a long, low thing.

They didn’t talk at all as Cas gripped Dean’s waist and Dean cupped Cas’ face. It was peaceful. They were the only ones there, and the lake lapped the shore in gentle _sush_ es. At some point, Cas fumbled at Dean’s shirt, and Dean paused. They pulled apart long enough for Dean to be able to see Cas’ expression. Cas asked him if he was okay with this.

Dean licked his lips, then leaned forward to kiss Cas again. This time when Cas’ fingers searched for his shirt, Dean didn’t protest.

Dean had had sex on the beach before, but never a beach like this. At one point he had the good sense to spread his and Cas’ jackets on the ground before Cas sought out his mouth again. The obsidian crunched beneath them when they lay on the jackets, side by side, with the light growing ever dimmer.

Dean felt slightly drunk because every moment felt so ungraspable. They slipped past him in an incomprehensive blur. Sometimes he could pick out that Cas had a hand there, a mouth here, a whispered word that Dean never quite understood. They moved slowly, but it seemed to be a mere moment between Cas fumbling off his pants and Dean shuddering into Cas’ hand.

When they’d finished, Dean guided them to the lake and they cleaned themselves in the still-warm waters. Dean watched the water glide down Cas’ arms and bare chest; it caught the light. Out of some whim, he took a cupful of water and poured it over Cas’ head. It wasn’t enough to soak him, just to mat down a few sections of hair and send beads of water sparkling through the rest of it. Cas gave him an odd smile and asked if he was being baptized. Dean said yes.

They replaced their boxers and pants, but forewent their shirts as they settled back on the jackets. Cas lay on his back, hands crossed over his rising and falling belly, eyes on the sky. Dean sat up beside him and stared at the lake extending into the horizon. He felt oddly wrung out.

“I think we’re lucky no one else was walking here,” Cas observed as the sun disappeared entirely and the air temperature began to grow notably cooler against Dean’s skin. It felt like the first clear words Cas had said in the last hour.

“Yeah.” Dean stretched himself out next to Cas and shifted to lie on his side. He ducked his head to bury his nose into the side of Cas’ neck. “Banged in Yellowstone,” he said after a moment. “I guess we can cross that one off the bucket list.”

Cas laughed, and his hands jumped up and down. Dean grinned and pressed a kiss to the side of Cas’ neck. He received a low hum in return. They lay in silence, letting themselves get enveloped by the darkness. It spread over them like a blanket. Cas’ breath came in even gusts, and Dean found a moment of complete serenity.

“How’s that one song go?” Dean suddenly murmured. Cas shifted his head slightly; Dean could still see his eyes, they were a bright enough blue. “ _I’ll walk in the rain by your side_ ,” Dean rumbled, only half singing. “ _I’ll cling to the warmth of your hand. I’ll do anything to keep you satisfied._ ”

Cas laughed again.

“ _I’ll love you more than anybody can_ ,” Dean kept going. “ _And the wind will whisper your name to me. Little birds will sing along in time_.” A pause. “Da, dada daaaa, da daaaa daaaa daaaa. _And something something bells will chime_.”

“I’ve converted you,” Cas told him.

“Not quite.” Dean shifted. “You’ve just played that Denver cassette enough times.”

Cas shook his head, and Dean saw the flash of his teeth.

“Sorry,” Cas said. “I hadn’t realized that it got to the point where you were learning the lyrics.”

“Eh. His stuff is kinda hokey, but…” Dean shrugged. But Cas liked John Denver a lot. So Dean learned to like it, too. “It’s not bad.”

“That’s a blatant fib,” Cas said. “But I appreciate it.”

It wasn’t a fib, Dean thought. He didn’t voice it.

“Is that where you got the idea for saying I remind you of plains? That sounds like the kind of thing John Denver would sing about,” Dean said. He saw Cas roll in his lips.

“You remember that?” Cas asked.

“Sure.”

Cas shrugged. “I just thought that if you were a landscape,” he said, “you’d be the Great Plains.”

“Huh. How about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d be a mountain.”

Dean squinted at the sky, where the first hints of stars were emerging.

“I think you got the cool one,” he finally said. He felt like there was something more here, but he couldn’t puzzle it out for the life of him.

“The plains are where the life is,” Cas said in that distant voice that meant he didn’t want to be talking about this. Dean sat up and looked down at Cas.

“Okay?” he said the word as a question. Cas looked up at him.

“It’s just…the plains have the water and the life. Mountains are…” Cas waved a hand.

“Mountains are what?” Dean asked.

“Uninhabitable,” Cas said. He looked downright embarrassed now.

“You think you’re uninhabitable?” Dean asked.

“We shouldn’t talk about this.”

“No, we should,” Dean insisted. “You’re not uninhabitable. Cas, you’re my family, okay?”

“Family doesn’t mean you don’t hurt each other.” Cas sat up as well, clasping his hands around his shins. “And I’ve done it too many times for me to feel comfortable about it.”

“What, so I’m always the victim here?” Dean demanded. “I haven’t hurt you too?”

Cas huffed and covered his eyes with one hand. “I don’t know,” he all but groaned.

“Well I have!” Dean’s voice rose, and yes, he was aware how shitty it was that he was trying so hard to insist that he’d hurt Cas.

“I _know_.” Cas glared up at him. His voice had flattened, turned frigid. Dean knew the signs so fucking well now; it was ridiculous. “Believe me Dean, I know every time I even _try_ to do something for you. You’re so wrapped up in your need to be everyone’s provider, you’re terrified to accept anything like help.”

“Oh, that’s great coming from you,” Dean snapped. “I’ve accepted your help since grade school. That’s how we fucking _met_ , you donating your food to the charity case kid.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Dean wished he could reach out and scoop them all back into his mouth. This was cycling back. This was what they were trying to avoid.

“You’re not a charity case.” Cas’ voice grew lower instead of louder, and Dean hated it. “That’s just what you’ve convinced yourself of. Just like you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t deserve anyone’s affection and shove it all away in a godforsaken panic. People can only feel sorry for you for so long, Dean. Eventually you push them away one too many times and they give up on you.”

“Fuck you!” Dean spat; the bridge of his nose tingled.

“No!” Cas roared back. “You know what? Meg never pulled that kind of thing. At least I knew where I stood with her. There weren’t all these _mood swings._ ”

“What the hell does Meg have to do with anything?” Dean demanded, even though he knew exactly what Cas was saying, and it made something inside him snap clean in half.

“Don’t play dumb, Dean, that’s another bad habit,” Cas said. His face might as well have been stone.

“Fuck you, Castiel,” Dean tried again. “I’m sick of you and your fucking need to be superior to the rest of us. It’s bullshit.”

He scrambled to a stand and yanked on his shirt. He plowed through the obsidian beach, untied boots crunching through the pebbles. He shoved his hands into his pockets and felt the pebble of obsidian, the granite stone. He whirled around and saw Cas watching him. Then he pulled the granite stone from his pocket, wound up, and chucked it as hard as he could into the lake. It disappeared into the darkness, only identified by a little plop in the water.

Dean turned back around and kept walking.

He didn’t look back.

He couldn’t look back.

***

Sam was already asleep, so Dean sat in the Impala and stewed. But he had patterns in these kinds of situations. Within an hour he was tired. Within an hour and a half he was wondering why he’d said anything at all. How he’d screwed up yet again.

Dean had been sitting in the Impala for nearly two hours when Cas appeared as a dim outline. He looked around the campsite, spotted Dean, and walked toward the car. Dean could have theoretically locked the doors, but that was the furthest thing from his mind at the moment. Cas clacked the door open, slid in the passenger seat, and placed his hands on his thighs. His hair looked damp and he smelled vaguely of lake water.

They sat in silence for another fifteen, twenty minutes. Trees groaned in the wind around them.

“The thing is,” Dean said in a low, rasping voice. His voice shot through the silence. “I’d be willing to forgive you right now.”

“Put it all behind,” Cas agreed, tilting his head back at the car ceiling. “Sam wouldn’t have to know that we fought at all. And I’m sure we’d be fine for a few days.”

Dean nodded. The bridge of his nose was prickling again.

“It wouldn’t last, though, would it?” Dean asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Cas shake his head.

“I get in these funks when we fight,” Cas said in a thin voice. “And all I want to do is shut you down. And when I wake back up from it, I feel like…I feel like I’m no better than someone like Ruby.”

Dean lowered his head slowly and stared at the pitch black of the windshield. He took a steady inhale and exhale.

“Maybe it’s a two-way street.”

“Dean, you’re not doing anything—“

“You know what? I don’t make things easy,” Dean looked across the seat to Cas. “Okay? I know that I have…I know that it’s way too easy for me to smother people; Sam’s told me enough times. And I know I do the same thing to you.” He took a breath. “Meg,” he said. “You got with her after we broke up?”

Cas nodded. Dean’s gut clenched again.

“And see, that shouldn’t bother me like it does,” he forced out. “But it’s like you cheated on me. That’s how much it’s messing me up.”

“I’m sorry,” Cas said in a faint voice.

“No!” Dean wiped both hands down his face. “No, you didn’t break any promises when you did that. I would have had the same right to get with someone, but I didn’t. Because I was so hung up on you. I’m still hung up on you. Cas, I’m so fucking terrified of you leaving, it’s at the point where it hurts you. It hurts us.”

Cas took a breath; it only shook a little.

“It makes me _want_ to leave,” Cas admitted. “You have this oxymoronic thing where you need people but don’t want to admit it for anything, so you force them back. It’s exhausting, Dean, trying to guess whether you’re in a shoving away or a grasping mood. I want to take care of you but you don’t let me.”

“Yeah.” Dean nodded his head too hard. “Yeah. I know.”

“And I know that change bothers you,” Cas continued. His voice grew more and more strained. “But I’m not the same person as I was in middle school or high school. I don’t feel like you’ve given me permission to grow up. In case you hadn’t noticed, I _do_ have emotions. I know how to interact with people these days. All of that piling up. It’s frustrating to deal with every day.”

Dean nodded again.

“So…” Cas wiped at his eyes with one hand. “So it’s not an excuse for how I treat you. But it’s an explanation.”

Dean nodded a third time. His vision blurred. Fuck.

Silence descended again. It was horrible, thick silence that muffled Dean’s ears and made him want to shout just to break it up.

“So what now?” he asked when he couldn’t handle it any more.

Cas’ hands came into his lap, and their fingers laced together.

“I’m afraid of what I’m going to do to you next.”

A long pause.

“I think I need to go away for a while,” Cas said. Dean’s heart seized, and he hated himself for it. Cas side-eyed him. “I know that’s the last thing you want to hear.”

“It is,” Dean said. No point in trying to dance around it.

“I don’t think we’re healthy for each other,” Cas continued. Dean could feel his breathing getting shallower and quicker.

“Then why,” he forced out, his voice choking, “do I feel like such shit when you’re gone?” Cas was silent. “How come you’re one of the best things in my life next Sam? How come, back in high school, the first time we kissed, it felt like the most right thing I’d done? Why, Cas?”

“I don’t know.” Cas’ voice almost disappeared.

“Do you feel the same way?” Dean demanded.

“You know I do.”

Dean did. It made the whole situation that much worse. Dean tossed up a hand and rubbed at his forehead.

“Fine.” He stared at the steering wheel. Cas shifted, sending the leather seat creaking. “Where are you going to go?” Dean demanded.

“There’s an airport nearby,” Cas said. “I can get a flight to Lawrence.”

“C’mon, Cas.” Dean looked at him with a pained expression. “You’re the one planning this trip.”

“Sam knows the reservations,” Cas said quietly. “I can leave you with the rest of the trip funds. You can keep going. Sam wants to see Zion and the Grand Canyon.”

“He doesn’t want to see them with just me,” Dean said. He blinked hard. “I can’t give him lectures on…on rock formations.” A moment of silence. “Cas, this is going to tear him up.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Cas demanded. “You think I _want_ to hurt Sam again?”

“Then don’t go.”

“And then we’ll be here again in a week. A week and a half. And that doesn’t do Sam any favors either.”

Dean smacked the steering wheel suddenly, biting on his lip so hard that he tasted blood. Fuck this. Fuck all this.

“It’s not…” Cas sighed. “This is the best of a bad situation.”

“Okay, Cas.” The tear track down his cheek burned, and Dean wiped at it angrily. “You know best.”

“Don’t.” The word came out thin, little, and broken. Dean stared at the steering wheel and felt his stinging hand and his stinging eyes. “Dean,” Cas said. “Dean, I’ve never thought that having a college degree makes me better than you somehow. Sam hasn’t either. You’re worth more than you believe. That worth comes from yourself, your actions, and not what diploma you have.” Dean didn’t trust himself to talk, so he kept his lips pressed together. His chin was bunching up. “That overrides anything else I’ve said to you,” Cas added belatedly.

Cas then leaned away. He clacked open the door and stepped out. Five seconds. Ten seconds.

Dean swore and opened the car door. He craned toward Cas.

“You’re seriously up and leaving in the middle of the night?” he demanded.

Cas just gave him a look that said, _If I don’t do this now, it won’t happen._

“At least let me give you a ride,” Dean said.

Cas tucked a duffel bag under his arm. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Be better if you didn’t,” he said. He looped a headlight around his neck.

“Take the good sleeping bag, then,” Dean stepped from the car completely. “And the one-man tent. Sammy and I won’t use them.”

Cas paused, looked at Dean, then nodded slightly.

Dean remained standing by the car as Cas gathered his things and packed them in his hiking backpack. His expression didn’t give anything away. Dean’s knees started to hurt and the air had turned downright chilly, but he didn’t dare go back into the car. He had to watch Cas finally swing the backpack onto his shoulders. Watch him glance at Dean one more time. Watch him turn away from Dean and start walking down the little dirt path that led to the main road.

“Cas!”

Dean broke into a run and nearly smacked into Cas.

“I…” Dean’s eyes flicked over Cas, then he placed his hands on either side of Cas’ face and crushed his lips to his forehead. He thought he was allowed that much. Cas looked pained when they parted, and his hand grasped at Dean’s wrist. Dean watched as Cas lifted Dean’s hand and kissed once at the inside of his wrist, once in the center of his palm.

Dean didn’t move as Cas gently lowered Dean’s hand, then turned back around and started walking again.

He turned into a bobbing ball of light.

Then he turned into nothing at all.

***

Dean spent the night debating whether to get in his car and track Cas down. He tried to run through their talk, to pinpoint where he could have changed things so that Cas didn’t turn into a distant light. He thumbed at his phone and kept scrolling past Cas’ name.

When the pressure in Dean’s chest got to the point that he didn’t think he could breathe properly, he had to climb into the tent and listen to the reassuring in and out of Sam’s breathing. It might have been creepy, but Dean didn’t give a rat’s ass. He needed to remind himself that Sam was still here. Sam wasn’t leaving him. Not yet.


	8. Chapter 8

Sam read the text a third time (fourth time? He didn’t know anymore) and looked through the tent’s netting to where Dean was watching the fire. Their coffee pot hung above the flames and the sunlight slanted through the trees like something from a postcard. Sam bit his lip then slowly replied to Cas’ text.

[Sam] _I want to be mad at you._

Sam hit send, then pulled on his clothes and crawled out of the tent. Dean glanced up to the sound of the zipper. He looked haggard.

“Hey.” He gave a smile that got nowhere near his eyes. Sam stood there, casting around for the right words.

“Got a text from Cas,” Sam said. Dean blinked, then nodded.

“What did he tell you?” he asked.

“Enough.”

Not really. Only that “I had to leave last night” and “We didn’t part on bad terms.” Sam only briefly entertained the idea of asking Dean for better details.

Sam’s pocket buzzed. He ignored it for now.

“You want to start packing, then?” Sam asked. Dean’s expression of relief was mildly heartbreaking.

While Dean was busy breaking down the tent, Sam pulled his phone from his pocket and examined Cas’ reply.

[Castiel] _I’m sorry_

Sam felt a small swell of disappointment.

[Sam] _Where are you?_

[Castiel] _I’m fine_

[Sam] _That’s not an answer_

[Castiel] _I promise that if I’m in trouble I’ll contact you._

[Sam] _You’re going to give me daily updates._

Cas didn’t reply immediately, so Sam expelled his nervous energy by reorganizing the trunk and ignoring the fact that it was much emptier than before. When Cas hadn’t replied after five minutes, Sam muttered under his breath.

[Sam] _You still there? Or did the grizzly eat you?_

[Castiel] _I’m here._ _You’ll get daily updates, don’t worry._

[Sam] _I’ll track you down if I don’t_

[Castiel] _Noted_

By the time they were ready to go, Sam was jacked on a cocktail of nervousness, frustration, disappointment, and a few other emotions. He and Dean didn’t talk as Dean pulled them out of the campsite and checked them out. Not when they cruised through Yellowstone for the last time. Not when they drove through the exit and aimed the Impala for Teton National Park. Dean just blasted his music and drove too fast. Sam slumped against the window and felt the empty backseat like a scab.

***

They traveled faster without Cas wanting to stop to look at road cuts. They reached the Grand Tetons in less than an hour.

The Tetons, a set of mountain peaks that rose from the land like a sudden thought, were admittedly gorgeous. They had a good day for viewing them; the sky was clear and the sun bright. Sam and Dean drove along the roads that afforded the best views. Not as many pine trees here. Rather, the land stretched in the shrubby plains that Sam had become accustomed to.

As Dean pointed them toward the visitors center, Sam gave in and texted Cas again.

[Sam] _We’re at the Tetons. They’re amazing_

[Castiel] _They’re the product of a normal fault. The tectonic plate on one side of the fault slipped down and the other remained elevated. That’s why the peaks are so sudden._

[Sam] _I’d wondered_

[Castiel] _You can see the fault line on one of the hikes, actually. I can try and give you directions_

[Sam] _If you want_

Sam lifted his head to find that they’d arrived in the visitors center’s parking lot. He glanced over to Dean as he cruised through the lot searching for an open space. He had on that mask that, Sam suspected, Dean thought made him look inscrutable. Cas didn’t answer immediately. Probably looking up the information. Sam pocketed the phone and pointed out an empty spot to Dean.

They didn’t talk much as they walked up to the visitors center. Sam wasn’t even sure how they’d agreed to come here; if Cas had been around, he’d have directed them to the nearest campsite or trailhead.

The visitors center was moderately busy with families and tour groups. A wide window and patio at the back afforded a spectacular view of the Tetons. Dean and Sam stepped onto the patio to examine the peaks once again, to let Sam snap a few pictures. When they went back inside the building, Dean mumbled something about finding a bathroom and ambled away. Sam quelled an urge to follow him and instead looked over the crowds again. He waited for a set of bright blue eyes and a head of black hair to come up to him and tell him that the placard had it all wrong, or that he wanted to get going and actually hike.

Sam’s eyes fell on the gift shop, and on the rack of postcards, magnets, keychains. Vinyl stickers. Sam walked toward the rack almost resolutely, and five minutes later had paid for two stickers. One had a stylized illustration of the Tetons; the other exclaimed “Grand Teton National Park” in a bold font. Cas could choose later. Sam tucked the small paper bag into his jacket pocket and tried not to feel ridiculous.

Dean was still nowhere in sight, so Sam meandered back into the parking lot and ended up perched on the Impala’s nose. He could still see the Tetons from this vantage point—they were hard to miss, in all honesty—and was gazing at the sharp, snow-covered peaks when his phone buzzed. Not a text, but a call. Sam kept his eyes on the mountains as he pulled the phone out and pushed answer.

“You should have come to see the Tetons,” Sam immediately told Cas. He didn’t mean to sound bitter.

He heard a long silence.

“Sorry, what?” Ruby asked.

The blood drained from Sam’s face.

“Hello?” Ruby asked when Sam didn’t speak for too many seconds in a row. “Sam? You there?”

“Yeah,” Sam managed. He slid down the car’s nose enough to stand. His grip on the phone was becoming white-knuckle. “Hi, sorry, thought you were someone else.”

He should be hanging up.

“No problem,” Ruby laughed. “I haven’t heard a peep from you all summer, sweetie, that’s all. I was starting to worry.”

“Oh.” Sam ran a hand through his hair. “Um. Sorry. I guess. I guess I should have let you know.”

“Where are you?” Ruby asked. She sounded teasing and relaxed.

“The Tetons,” Sam said. “Wyoming.”

“Wyoming!” Ruby laughed. “What the hell, dude? What’re you doing there?”

“Road trip with Dean and Cas.”

“Oh, geeze.” Sam could all but hear her rolling her eyes, making a face. “Dude, why are you doing that to yourself? Bet they’re fighting like a pair of cats.”

“Yeah,” Sam said truthfully. “Yeah, they kind of are. Cas just sort of…left us last night, actually.” ( _Why_ had he felt the need to share that?)

“Wow, that was a dick move,” Ruby commented. “I mean, you should have seen that coming, but still. If you weren’t all the way over in freaking Wyoming I’d invite you over right now. We’re just chilling in Petra’s apartment. You remember Petra?”

“Sure. Sure, I remember Petra.”

“When’re you coming back?”

“I, um. I don’t really know. We don’t have a set schedule.”

“Well, as soon as you do, you really need to get your butt back over here.” Ruby’s tone remained light, but it had a tinge of annoyance now. “Seriously, Sam, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re ditching us.” A pause. “You’re not ditching us, are you?”

“I kind of need to go,” Sam lied.

“What, is Dean ordering you around again?” Ruby asked. “He can wait. Tell him to wait.”

“It’s not Dean.” Sam could feel his heart beat racing, his palms starting to sweat. He reminded himself that Ruby was way back in Kansas.

“What’s so important, then?” Ruby demanded. “C’mon, we finally talk after something like a month, and you’re rushing off already.”

“I need to go,” Sam repeated. “Sorry, I’ll call later.”

“Sam—“

Sam hung up. He blinked at his phone screen, then thrust it into his pocket and wiped both hands down his face. He felt a bloom of frustration and disgust at the way his body was entering full-blown panic mode now. He needed…he needed something. Some way to get everything to calm down and…

Sam looked up and found a parking lot devoid of any Dean. Cas was god-knew-where. And besides, they were wrapped up in their own dramas. They didn’t need Sam to make things more complicated. They didn’t need—oh. Wait.

Sam snatched at his phone with such little coordination that he nearly dropped it on the sidewalk. Shaken by the possibility, he scooted over to the grass and found a small wooden bench. He sat there and texted Kevin with stumbling fingers.

[Sam] _Cna you talk?_

Forty seconds later, and Kevin replied. Blessed, prompt, Kevin.

[Kevin] _Give me a second. Will call you._

Sam jogged his legs up and down until his phone started buzzing again, and this time he checked the name before he jabbed the “answer” button.

“Hey,” he said, mildly embarrassed at how much relief he shoved into that one word.

“Hey,” Kevin echoed. His voice sounded mildly muffled. “Sorry if I have to hang up suddenly. I’m hiding in the supply closet and hoping no one comes in here looking for a mop too soon.”

Sam coughed out a laugh, and it threw something off of his chest that he hadn’t even realized had been choking at him.

“What’s up?” Kevin asked; Sam heard something clatter in the background.

“You sure you want to do this?” Sam asked. “I don’t want to get you fired.”

“I won’t get fired,” Kevin said after a moment of thought. “I’ll get assigned to filing papers or something. Not the end of the world, trust me.”

Sam leaned back in the bench and rattled out an exhale. Kevin remained silent, but Sam could still hear him breathing. It was amazing how comforting that sound could be.

“Sorry,” Sam said after too many seconds. “I’m a little rattled.”

“It’s okay,” Kevin said.

“I, uh. A lot’s been going on.”

“What kind of things?”

“Um.” Sam squinted at the brightness of the parking lot. “So I told you Dean and Cas were sort of drifting back together?”

“Yeah?”

“Scratch that. Something happened last night and now Cas is gone.” Sam heard a sudden inhale.

“Shit,” Kevin said emphatically. “Like, he’s ditched you guys? Disappeared?”

“Not exactly,” Sam wiped a hand across his face. “I’m texting him; he’s okay and everything. It’s just…fucking hell, I thought we were done with all this. This was done a year ago. And now Dean’s just…” Sam sighed the rest of that feeling.

“Damn,” Kevin said. “I’m sorry, Sam. I really am.” A pause. “I’m admitting right now that I’m really bad at the comforting shtick, but you need to believe me when I say that I wish I could…you know. Fix. All that.”

Sam huffed a laugh; he could just imagine Kevin’s awkward expression right now.

“You’re okay,” Sam promised. “It helps to unload on someone.”

“Right.” Kevin sounded more confident. “I can listen to you unload. Anything else? I can listen to it and. Y’know. Make comforting noises.”

Sam rolled in his lips and played with the loose threads on the hem of his shirt.

“Sam?”

“I also…” Sam cleared his throat and switched the phone to his left ear. “It’s kind of ridiculous.” Another too long of a pause. “I’ve mentioned Ruby to you, right?”

“Sure. You dated her last year.”

“Yeah.” And despite everything, Sam still found himself listening for a tone of…something in Kevin’s voice. Jealousy maybe. “I…okay, are you good to listen to some backstory?”

“Primed.”

“Ruby and I dated for about three months,” Sam jumped in without much preamble. “I met her in the middle of Dean and Cas breaking up. She was…she was really, really good at distracting me. She was funny, whip-smart. I liked her because she didn’t have any ties to Dean or Cas at all, and she made me feel like I was good enough. Just me, just Sam, was good enough.” He couldn’t tell anything from the silence on the other end of the line, so Sam bulled forward.

“She had some friends that I started hanging out with. They were into going to concerts and hanging out at peoples’ apartments smoking pot. Pretty harmless, in that sense.”

Sam paused.

“But?” Kevin prompted.

“But there was other stuff. More potent stuff. I was in the middle of a lot of shit; Dean and Cas were busy ripping each other apart, Bobby and Ellen weren’t around to yell at me properly. It wasn’t too hard to start using. And it never got to the point where I was dangerously addicted but, I mean, I was headed there.”

Kevin was silent. He was still on the line, because Sam could hear him.

Shit. Sam has just ruined it. Ruined everything they’d been building the past few weeks. Kevin wouldn’t want to deal with the train wreck—

“That sucks,” Kevin said in a soft voice. “You shouldn’t have had to deal with that.”

Sam didn’t have words readily available. He ended up shrugging, even though Kevin couldn’t see him.

“Yeah,” he said a moment after realizing this.

“So all those days you skipped out—“

“I was somewhere being high off my ass, yeah.” Sam sighed. “It wasn’t…I knew I shouldn’t have been doing it. And every time I’d tell myself it was the last time, that I’d start going to classes again. Only then Dean or Cas would say or do something to set me off. I’d go to complain to Ruby. And then everything else just followed. And then Ruby herself.” Sam gripped at his knee. “She started to guilt me for wanting to hang out with Dean or Cas at all, or any other friends I had. At first it felt like her wanting me to stay out of their mess, which was fair enough. But—and I didn’t even realize this until way after the fact—she was all about getting me to sleep over at her apartment all the time and spending my holiday with her folks and she was basically my only source of positive human interaction for a while. And the drugs. The drugs were a big part of me hanging around her.”

“Sam, that’s abuse,” Kevin said suddenly, his voice suddenly sharp. “Isolating you from other people? Getting you addicted? That’s her controlling you. That’s _abuse_.” Angry. Kevin sounded angry.

“Yeah.” Sam hollowly laughed out the word. “Yeah, too bad I never figured it out for myself.”

“How’d you get out of that?”

“Ellen,” Sam said. “She knew something was up and got it out of me. Gave Dean and Cas an earful for letting me get to that point. They’d been broken up for a while at that point, but she dragged everyone into her house and read us the riot act.” Sam paused. “Then after that Dean and Cas got into a really bad fight. One of the worst they’ve had.” Sam shrugged. “They were fighting because of me, I know that much. Blaming each other for dropping the ball. No matter that I was 20 and should have been able to look out for myself.”

“Everyone needs a support group, though.” A sigh snaked through the phone line. “Sorry. That’s just…of all people, it shouldn’t have been you who had to go through that.”

Sam opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“Ruby just called me,” he blurted. “That’s why I called you.”

“Oh.” Kevin shifted the phone. “How did that go?”

“She has this thing where she doesn’t act like she…like we’re still good friends. And the guilt thing. She pulls the guilt thing and I guess have this knee-jerk reaction to it. I legitimately was feeling bad for going on this trip and not telling her.” Sam licked his lips. “I was getting a fucking _panic_ attack.”

“I’m sorry,” Kevin said, and he sounded legitimately pained.

“It’s ridiculous,” Sam bit out, and he felt his throat tightening up. “She shouldn’t be able to affect me like that, but she does. This thing with Dean and Cas right now, it shouldn’t be getting to me like this, _but it freaking does_.” Sam heaved an inhale and exhale. He had to blink hard because the parking lot was starting to blur. “I don’t want to be this exposed,” he shook out. “I hate this. God, I fucking hate this.”

Kids and their parents were still walking a few paces away, so Sam shaded his face with one hand and ducked his head. Tears were seeping from the corners of his eyes, dripping down his nose. He felt bad for Kevin, because god knew that the only thing more awkward than watching someone cry was having to listen to them cry over a phone.

“Sam?” Kevin asked in a gentle voice. “Sam, I wish I was there right now.”

“I know,” Sam said thickly.

“I’m serious.” Kevin’s voice sounded a little unsteady now, and Sam had the sudden notion that he’d managed to make Kevin start crying too. Fantastic.

“I wish…” Kevin tapered off. “I’m giving you a hug right now.”

“Yeah?” Sam grinned a little despite everything.

“A massive hug,” Kevin promised. “It’s going on for several minutes.”

Sam sniffed and wiped at his eye with the palm of his hand.

“Thanks, Kevin,” he said.

“Dude, it’s a virtual hug. I wish I could do more here.”

“It’s enough,” Sam told him truthfully.

***

Hanging up took another ten minutes between Sam insisting that Kevin couldn’t have illicit phone conversations in the supply closet for too long, not if he was intent on staying on Crowley’s good side, and Kevin insisting that Crowley didn’t have a good side anyway and he wasn’t leaving Sam in the state he was in.

“I’m fine,” Sam repeated. “I was just having a breakdown. Go back to work.”

“Are you sure?” Kevin asked for the umpteenth time. “Don’t lie to me.”

But, in the end, they did end up hanging up, but not without Kevin making Sam swear to call him again as soon as Kevin was out of work.

Sam wiped at his eyes again as he set his phone on the bench beside him. He braced his hands on his knees and exhaled hard. Talking to Kevin had cleaned something out of him.

“Sam?”

Sam jerked his head up and saw Dean standing on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets and expression hesitant. They stared at one another for several seconds.

“Were you eavesdropping?” Sam asked.

“No,” Dean said.

“Okay.” Sam grabbed his phone and slipped it back into his pocket. He had no idea whether to believe Dean. It didn’t matter. “Sorry.”

“Don’t need that,” Dean said. He hadn’t moved, and Sam pushed himself to a stand. “Is everything…?” Dean shrugged.

“No,” Sam said. He started walking past Dean to the Impala. Dean took a moment to follow him.

“What happened?”

“You’ve got enough crap on your mind.”

“Says who?”

“Leave it, Dean.”

Something snagged at Sam’s shoulder. He turned to face Dean.

“Who were you talking to?” Dean demanded.

“You’d like to know that, wouldn’t you?” Sam said.

“Cas?” Dean didn’t let go of Sam’s arm.

“No.” Sam jerked his arm away. “Kevin, okay? Just Kevin.”

“Okay.” Dean paused. “About what?”

“Fucking leave it.” Sam made it the rest of the way to the Impala and slid into the passenger seat. He watched Dean pull at his mouth before clacking open the door and getting into the driver’s seat.

Dean didn’t start the engine. Instead he looked over at Sam. “Well?” he demanded.

“Ruby just called me,” Sam spat at the dashboard. “I freaked. I called Kevin.”

Dean swore under his breath.

“Why didn’t you come to me?” Dean demanded, his voice rising in volume.

“ _Because_ , Dean,” Sam said, his voice going higher, “ _you’re_ busy angsting over Cas. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dean hissed, one hand running into his hair. “Sam, I know how to give a fuck about more than one person at a time.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I know.” Sam slumped in his seat. “That’s all you do is worry about everyone.”

Dean changed tack. “What did Ruby say?”

“The usual.” Sam tucked his legs up on the seat. “Listen, it’s nothing. I was just freaking out.”

“You were crying.”

“So what?”

“Sam.” Dean’s voice broke, and that made Sam look over. Dean had his hands on the steering wheel. Like he needed an anchor. Or wanted to be speeding down a road right now. “Cas is gone right now, and I’d really fucking appreciate it if you wouldn’t shut me out too, okay? I know it’s ten kinds of selfish to say that, but I’m serious.”

Sam shut his eyes briefly. They sat in silence for nearly a full minute.

“Ruby called,” Sam repeated slowly. “I was panicking. I hung up and called Kevin because…because I trust him.” Sam peered over at Dean. “You and Cas aren’t the only ones I should be able to go to for these things.”

“I know that,” Dean said. His tone didn’t support the words.

“Dean?”

“Sorry,” Dean breathed. “I know. We’ve talked about this too many times. It’s just. I hate it when I can’t be the one to fix things.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. He shifted in his seat and scanned the Tetons again. He sighed. “It’s not like you’re ever going to become irrelevant in my life, Dean.”

“Oh come on,” Dean shook his head. “You’ll become a lawyer, I’ll still be somewhere fixing cars.”

“Dean,” Sam all but groaned. “Dean, no. No, I can’t even believe I have to keep saying this. Dean.” Sam reached out to grip at Dean’s shoulder. “Being a mechanic doesn’t mean shit. Having a GED doesn’t mean shit. The fact that you dealt with dad being drunk and me being a little brat at the same time most nights? That you were there all the times when dad should have been there?” Sam shook his head, and with a mental _what the hell,_ used his other hand to pull Dean into a proper hug. It was awkwardly done, them leaning across the Impala’s front seat. But they managed.

Dean gripped Sam too tightly. Dean always gripped people too tightly. Even when they hurt him, he held on. It made him exasperating and endearing and heartbreaking all at once.

Sam tucked his nose into the crook of Dean’s neck and tried to grip back just as tightly, if only for a moment.

“Why are you the one trying to comfort my sorry ass?” Dean asked, a little muffled. Sam pulled away and found a face that was only a little blotchy. “You’re the one who just talked to the demon girlfriend.”

“She’s not a demon,” Sam said tiredly, then shrugged. “Kevin helped a lot.”

“So he knows about all that?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sam nodded. “Took it shockingly well, actually.”

“Well that’s good.” Dean sighed and wiped at his eyes. “Future reference,” he added. “When you guys start dating, he’ll get the downgraded threatening older brother speech.”

“ _Dean_.”

“Did I say ‘when’? I meant ‘if’. Naturally.” Dean looked bleary-eyed and drained, but he still managed the shit-eating grin.

Sam smacked the back of Dean’s head and got a guffaw for his troubles.

***

The sun beat down on the back of Cas’ neck and reminded him that he needed to apply another layer of sunscreen. He kept shuffling along and squinted down the road. Still empty. Cas hefted the backpack again, took a few more steps, then gave in and came to a halt. He dropped the backpack to the ground and first went for his water bottle. He sprinkled water over his head first, then took several large gulps. He had enough water packed, he told himself firmly. He’d be fine. Cas then rooted out the sunscreen and smeared it across his face and the back of his neck.

When he’d finished all this, Cas repacked, hefted the backpack onto his shoulders, and started walking again.

Utah sprawled around him in dry, scrubby hills. It was impressive; not for any dramatic features, just in how far it all extended and how uninhabited it looked.

Somewhere in the distance, Cas heard a distant _whoooosh_. He kept walking but stuck up his thumb. His other hand found the pocket with the bear spray. If the mace—or whatever was in here—could convince a bear to back off, Cas had to hope it would do the same for a potential serial killer.

A Dean-sounding voice reminded him of ending up in a warehouse missing kidneys. Cas huffed a laugh despite himself.

The _whooshing_ grew progressively louder, and Cas lifted his head enough to decide whether it came from ahead or behind. Unfortunately, the hills around him were large enough, and the road’s curves sudden enough, that he didn’t have a good view. Cas dropped his head again and kept walking. He started whistling, as if he regularly walked along deserted highways waiting to be picked up by strangers.

He could hear the car properly now; it was coming up behind him. Cas glanced back and spotted a sleek, silver sports vehicle. Cas lifted his thumb a little higher.

Ten more paces, and the car audibly slowed down. Cas’s heart leapt in his chest. He turned around to find the car slowing to a near stop, the front window rolling down. The face that leaned across the passenger sear was angular and lightly bearded.

“Hey,” the man said in an English accent. “You headed somewhere?”

Cas stopped altogether and studied the Englishman in the middle of Utah. He didn’t _look_ like the type to kill people, but then again, what did Cas know?

“Yes,” Cas replied. “Toward southwestern Utah. Zion.”

“Zion?” The man grinned. He was handsome, Cas realized a little belatedly. So maybe he didn’t need to worry about murder; maybe it was just a matter of not being raped.

“You heading in that direction?” Cas asked.

“I should be passing through there,” the man said. “Or, close enough for you, I should imagine. Want to hop in? You’re going to end up buzzard food out here.”

Cas glanced up at the merciless sun then gave a mental shrug. He opened the door and slid inside.

Cas didn’t know too much about cars; that had always been Dean’s thing. But even he could gather that this was a nice car. The seats were smooth leather under his hands and the dashboard looked appropriately modern. A world away from the Impala.

“So.” Cas jerked his head up to his new traveling companion as he pressed on the accelerator. “You have a name?”

Cas considered a false name, but didn’t quite see the point. “Castiel Milton,” he said. “Cas for short.”

“Ah, very nice.” The man nodded, glancing over and giving Cas a grin. He had a charm similar to Dean’s, Cas decided. Not as rustic; more city slicker. But it worked to some degree, because Cas could feel himself being drawn in.

“You can call me Balthazar,” the man continued. “Mouthful, I know, but the nicknames simply don’t suit me. Balthy is only something my mother can say and Zar sounds like the name of an invading alien in a ‘60s space movie.”

Cas laughed suddenly.

“It does a little,” he admitted.

“So, Castiel. Cas. Mr. Milton. I’m afraid I’ll have to further invade your privacy by asking what you were doing hiking along this highway.” Balthazar gave another disarming grin. “I’ll admit right now that I largely decided to become your saving grace out of boredom.”

Cas had to wonder how Balthazar could be bored with the landscape he was passing, but didn’t voice as much. Cas drummed at his knees a few times before turning to Balthazar.

“I was road-tripping with my two best friends,” he said. “And I got in a bad argument with one of them. And I left.”

“Ah.” Balthazar winced sympathetically. “Did they ditch you on the road? Pretty crappy friends if they did.”

“No, no.” Cas shook his head. “I left them. Back in Yellowstone. I hitchhiked my way here.”

“You’ve come all the way from Yellowstone?” Balthazar whistled. “Never met someone who does stuff like that. Hey, you ever seen those blokes who hitchhike and camp for a living? All dirty, tanned, and bearded? You might become one of those with enough practice.”

Cas laughed despite himself. “Maybe,” he said. It’d be easier in some ways than his life back in Kansas, he admitted. Though the complete lack of showers would become grating eventually. Cas glanced out the river again and watched sharp hills swell past them.

“Gorgeous, huh?” Balthazar asked. “Never see anything like this in England. Even in Europe. The Alps are impressive, but they’re all green and civilized. This, this is truly wilderness, eh?”

“Yeah,” Cas said. He pointed suddenly. “Those are some beautiful tilted bedding.”

“Tilted what now?”

“Um, the rock layers. See how they’re at an angle?” Balthazar glanced at the window, then nodded.

“Okay, I see it. You into rocks?”

“I’m a geologist,” Cas admitted, which made Balthazar perk up considerably.

“Not joke! This is your turf then, isn’t it?”

“A bit.” Cas nodded, and realized he was blushing slightly.

“All right, here’s a deal then,” Balthazar told him. “You explain how the hell some of this stuff got here and we’ll consider your ride paid for in full.”

Cas agreed.

***

Approximately five hours later, they found themselves in a small bar on the outskirts of Beaver, Utah. Cas had four (five?) beers inside him already, and everything was taking on that pleasantly fuzzy edge. Balthazar especially. The fuzzy edge on Balthazar was _especially_ nice.

“Mate, you might want to slow down there,” Balthazar told him, and Cas realized that he’d said that last part out loud.

“Sr’ry,” Cas said, then took another swig from the bottle Balthazar had handed him a little while ago. “It’s just.” Cas accidentally slammed the bottle onto the bar. “Sorry,” he repeated. “It’s just, what the hell did Hester think she was getting at with that paper? I can understand where her hypothesis came from. But her methods were an absolute nightmare. I’m shocked that they published her at all.”

“That Hester,” Balthazar repeated, shaking his head.

“Hang on.” Cas squinted. “You don’t know who I’m talking about at all.”

“Sure I do.” Balthazar was giving that shit-eating grin that Cas had seen on Dean too many times to be fooled.

“No,” Cas said with confidence. “You’re a salesman. You don’ know the first thing ‘bout orogenies or…or thrust faulting.”

“Are you using actual words there or are those made up?” Balthazar asked.

“Real,” Cas said proudly. “Geology accidentally has the most erotic vocabulary of all the sciences.” He took another pull from his beer. “There is—and I shit you not—a mineral called cummingtonite.”

“No.”

“Yes. Mineral composition Mg-two-Mg-five-Si-eight-O-twenty-two-O-H-two.” Cas took another swig of beer to celebrate remembering that. “Our department’s t-shirt two years ago said ‘We’ll have you Mg2Mg5Si8O22(OH)2.’” Dean had loved that shirt. He used to steal it all the time and proclaim that cummingtonite was his favorite mineral, even though Castiel had told him that, in all seriousness, cummingtonite was asbestos and no, Dean shouldn’t have a sample because it would kill his lungs.

“Is this how you pick up people at bars, then?” Balthazar asked, sounding highly amused. “Geology erotica?”

Cas had never picked up anyone at a bar, he considered. He supposed that Balthazar was his first. Really, he could do worse.

“No,” Cas said truthfully. “But I could try it out on a willing guinea pig.”

He grinned over at Balthazar.

Balthazar grinned back.

***

When Cas came to, the first thing he saw was the red lights of the alarm clock. 8:38.

The second thing was a body at Cas’ back. Cas scrunched his eyes closed and exhaled hard. After a moment, he tugged at his legs and found—to his immense relief—that Balthazar was not a cuddler. (Not like Dean at all—no. Stop.) Cas found his pants draped over a chair and his shirt crumpled on the floor. The backpack had been tossed in a corner but looked otherwise undisturbed. Cas tugged on his clothes and, after a moment of thought, rooted through his backpack and extracted forty dollars. That would hopefully cover his portion of the hotel room. Cas didn’t have any experience with one-night stands (Meg hadn’t been that at all) and had no idea what was protocol.

“I’m not a call boy, Castiel,” a voice said as Cas moved to place the money on the bedside table. Cas winced and tightened his grip on the bills.

“I know,” he said. He glanced sidelong at Balthazar, who was just lifting his head and squinting blearily at him. “But I wanted to help pay for the room.”

“Psh.” Balthazar sat up properly. “You’re a grad student, aren’t you? You can’t have money just laying around.” Cas opted not to say that his father made enough to give Cas some financial leeway. Instead he stuffed the money back into his pocket.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he said.

“Sure.” Balthazar half-smiled. He yawned. “Up for some breakfast?”

“What?”

“Breakfast. It’s a meal generally eaten in the morning hours.”

“Yes, I know but—I really ought to…” Cas had to let that sentence trail off because really, what schedule did he have?

“Let me get some clothes on.” Balthazar swung his legs from the bed. “I promise to let you go on your wayfaring ways after I’ve ensured you’ve eaten something.”

“You already gave me dinner yesterday,” Cas pointed out as a last-ditch effort.

Balthazar snorted. “Bar food.” He sniffed at the shirt he’d been wearing yesterday then tugged it on. “And not to worry, we’ll probably end up in that diner across the road. Hardly high-end cuisine.”

Cas sighed and ended up following Balthazar out the door.

***

[Castiel] _Still all right._

[Sam] _Where are you?_

[Castiel] _Repeating the question isn’t going to get an answer_

[Sam] _I can try._

[Castiel] _I’m safe and have enough to eat. That ought to be enough._

[Sam] _I’m going to call Anna soon. Or Gabe._

[Castiel] _They wouldn’t worry half as much as you’re worrying right now_

[Sam] _Maybe get your mom involved_

[Castiel] _You’re hilarious_

[Sam] _I’m dead serious. Why can’t we actually talk instead of just texting?_

[Castiel] _Please leave it Sam. I’ll stay in touch_

Cas thrust his phone into his pocket to avoid seeing Sam’s reply. He looked up to find Balthazar returning from the bathroom.

“No food yet?” Balthazar tutted as he slid into the opposite side of the booth. “They’re not that busy, are they?” Cas shrugged and fiddled with a sugar packet. They had indeed ended up in the diner across from the hotel; some small, local chain that served the kind of greasy comfort food Dean especially loved. Cas took another sip of his black coffee and sighed heavily without meaning to.

“So, listen.” Balthazar clasped his hands on the table. “I’m neither blind nor deaf, and since I like you and I am in fact an incredibly meddlesome person, I’m going to ask. Who’s Dean?” Cas blanched. “At least,” Balthazar continued. “I’m fairly sure that’s the name you were shouting last night.”

“Oh god,” Cas bowed his head and buried his face in his hands. “Oh god, I’m so sorry. That’s…that’s just downright stereotypical, isn’t it?”

“A past lover it is, then.” Balthazar sounded satisfied.

“My ex-boyfriend,” Cas admitted miserably. He was already this deep; no point in denying things.

“Ah.” Balthazar leaned back. “Even more sticky.” Cas lifted his face enough to peer at Balthazar, but the man was pouring another packet of sugar into his coffee and looked unperturbed.

“You’re not bothered?” Cas asked. Balthazar glanced back up and lifted an eyebrow.

“This time yesterday, we had no idea that the other existed,” Balthazar said. “Should I act like you’ve had no history before you met me?”

“I mean…no, but that still can’t be comfortable for you.”

Balthazar shrugged. “I’ve committed that offense enough times myself. And you were doing that amazing thing with your hips at that point so honestly I wasn’t too—“

“All right, all right.” Cas waved a hand frantically. “The waitress is coming.” Balthazar grinned wolfishly.

After the waitress had slid their plates in front of them, Cas ended up picking moodily at his hash browns while Balthazar dug into his sausage with more relish than Cas thought was fair.

“Keeping up with this spirit of nosiness,” Balthazar said, waving a fork. “Is Dean a recent thing?”

“Um. Yes.” Cas sighed and set his fork down. “He was actually one of the people I was road tripping with.”

Balthazar’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?” he said. “Brave of you.”

Cas sighed. “Stupid, more like.” He shook his head with a sudden swell of frustration.

“You know, we’ve known each other since fourth grade. Dated for eight whole years. And we wanted to fix things this summer. I could tell. We both wanted it. And then we didn’t manage it.” Cas looked at Balthazar a little desperately. “How does that happen? Two people are fine for _years_. And then—“Cas threw up a hand.

Balthazar leaned back in his seat. “Well, my sister just got a divorce. They realized they’d jumped into the marriage thing too quickly; they weren’t as right for each other as they’d thought.”

“So that’s it, then?” Cas demanded. “It’s all a mistake? Years of loving another human being, and it’s all a mistake?”

“Can be.”

Cas shook his head and stabbed at his food again.

“What do you think fell through for you two?” Balthazar asked.

“That I’m a horrible person.” Cas kept his eyes on his plate. “I keep saying awful things to him.” He bit his lip. “Dean is better off not knowing me.”

Balthazar straightened. “Those are some harsh words,” he said.

“They’re true.”

Balthazar tilted his head slightly, like he was trying to figure Cas out. “Listen,” he finally said. “Cas, I’ve met some abusive wankers in my day. You’re not the type.”

“Y’know, people don’t go around wearing convenient wife-beaters so you can identify them,” Cas mumbled, and that elicited a surprised laugh from Balthazar.

“Nah,” he agreed. “They don’t. But my thought is: if you’re legitimately bothered by whatever it is you’ve done, that’s a good sign. Maybe it means that you’ve got some bad behaviors, but you’re still salvageable.”

Cas blinked then lifted his head. “What if I’m not salvageable?” he asked.

“To be fair, I don’t know you all that well,” Balthazar told him, “but I get the sense that you are.”

Cas frowned. “I think you’re just saying that,” he said.

“I’m really not.”

“No, you’re wrong,” Cas insisted. “Because if I actually cared about Dean, I wouldn’t have slept with you.”

“Is that a fact?”

“It would get to him.” Cas sighed. “If he knew about last night, he’d try to pretend like it wasn’t a big deal and then be torn up about it.”

“Mm,” Balthazar hummed. “My apologies, then, for my role in all that.”

Cas waved a hand. “You couldn’t have known. But you see my point? I’m not good for him.” Balthazar puttered his lips and took another swig of coffee.

“Dunno, Cas,” he said. “Maybe you two aren’t meant to work out. Or maybe you are. Maybe this is just one of the bigger lumps in your relationship and you’ll end up happily married and I’ll become a funny story to tell ten years down the road.” Balthazar cocked his head. “Was that suitably vague advice?”

“That’s one way to put it,” Cas admitted.

***

Balthazar dropped Cas off at a gas station and handed him a twenty.

“What’s this for?” Cas asked blankly.

“It might be helpful.” Balthazar nudged the money into his hand.

Cas tried to protest. “I don’t…you’ve already given me too much.”

“And you’ve given me a few lessons in rocks,” Balthazar countered. “Take it.” Cas hesitated, then accepted the bill.

“Thank you,” he said.

Balthazar shrugged. “You try not to get killed. And good luck with your Dean.”

“Yeah,” Cas sighed. “Yeah, I’ll need it.”

A minute later, Cas stood in front of the store and watched Balthazar’s car pull into the main road. He looked down at the bill, then laughed when he saw the phone number scribbled in the corner.

***

Cas didn’t find a ride until well after nightfall, and then the truck driver only got him as far as the edge of Dixie National Forest, sitting between Zion and Bryce Canyons. That suited Cas well enough. He found a decent spot to set up camp that night, and next morning opted to hike his way through the forest.

The constant motion settled something inside Cas. He’d read somewhere that the urge to walk, to explore new lands, was something embedded in the human DNA. Since no one was around to judge him, he went ahead and imagined himself as the last human in the world. Or the first; it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that he avoided the trails and fought his way through underbrush and lost himself in the topography. It was a kind of meditation, and Cas could feel himself sinking deeper and deeper into himself the more hours he went without human interaction. It felt like a cleanse after the storm of Dean, of Sam, of Balthazar. Cas couldn’t find it in himself to feel guilty for it.

At one point, near the end of the second day in Dixie, Cas peaked a high hill and found himself confronted with a sprawling landscape of red rock, scattered trees, and more sharp hills. Cas could find no indication of human habitation; no roads snaking in the distance, no houses nestled in the landscape. Cas stood there, over-grown hair falling into his eyes, and stared. He stayed there as the sun set and threw dramatic colors over the landscape. When the stars began to appear, Cas set up a small fire and kept watching. A half moon shone yellow above him; it, the stars, and Cas’ own small fire provided the only light.

Cas didn’t bother with the tent that night. He lay in his sleeping bag and stared at the sky. He remembered a quote Sam had once found and shared with him. Cas had liked it enough to write it on a notecard and stick it on his corkboard in his bedroom. Now, because it felt somehow appropriate, he whispered it into the chilly night air.

“All mean egotism vanishes,” he murmured. “I became a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

Dean would be rolling his eyes right now. But Dean wasn’t here, so Cas stared into the night sky and imagined currents of energy sliding through his muscles, his bones, threading into his nose with each inhale and exploding out of his mouth with every exhale.

***

By the next morning—and Cas was not sure how—the spell had been broken. Cas packed up his camping supplies, started down the hill, and an hour later found a service road. He followed it to the main road, then to the highway, and by midday had a ride to Zion.


	9. Chapter 9

Sam and Dean rolled into Zion National Park in the late morning of a Monday. The canyon engulfed them suddenly, rising up with its high walls and swooping lines. Dean drove slowly so they could appreciate the scenery. It wasn’t as nonsensical as the formations in Bryce Canyon, but this was grander. This was something they could enter and view close up.

Sam had his cheek pressed against the window, his gaze fixed upward. At one point, he gave in and rolled the window down so he could stick his head out the window and stare up uninhibited. Dean considered telling Sam that he was going to lose his head that way, but in the end decided not to.

They drove down the curving road, vista after vista opening up before them. At one point, Dean found that the road entered a tunnel bored into the rock and tapped Sam on the shoulder. Sam spotted the tunnel then pulled his head back inside.

“This place is amazing,” was all he said as Dean rolled the windows up and flicked on the headlights. The tunnel proved to be a long one. Cars flashed past them and the concrete walls blurred around them. Once in a while they passed windows to the outside and they glimpsed tantalizing vistas.

When they finally emerged from the tunnel, Dean’s eyes widened despite himself. The road wove along the wall of a canyon that was all soaring peaks and sheer walls. Dean peered up at them and ended up slowing down. None of the drivers behind him honked at him to hurry up; they were probably all staring too. Dean imagined Cas leaning up from the backseat and explaining how this had gotten here. Dean tapped the accelerator.

The road switchbacked down the canyon and continued toward the campgrounds and, beyond that, the town just outside the park.

“So.” Dean turned to Sam. “Where are the first-come first-serve sites?”

“Uh.” Sam tore his eyes away from the canyon to look at the papers sitting in his lap. He extracted a map and squinted at it for a moment before pointing Dean toward a smaller side road.

They lucked out. A small campsite stood open as they rolled through the site, and Dean nabbed it with a triumphant little, “Hah!”

As they started the routine of unpacking, Dean ended up digging through the backseat in search of the bag of spices he’d thrown back there. In the process of groping under the seat, his hand found something small, plastic, and rectangular. Dean pulled it out and stared at Cas’ John Denver cassette. He flipped it open and found that the cassette was still in there.

Dean puttered his lips and stuck the cassette into his pocket.

***

Between Sam’s insistence that they get some hiking in that day and Dean’s protestations that they’d hiked the last two days, they opted to go on one of the easier, more popular trails. They had to take the shuttle to the trailhead since cars were prohibited and walking all the way there would have taken most of the day. Dean ended up listening to Sam read from a brochure he’d picked up somewhere. (Sam, Dean had discovered, attracted reading material to him like a magnet. Dean had stopped wondering a long time ago where all their books came from.) Sam sounded animated and awake, and that was a difference enough from the episode with Ruby for Dean to be content.

The past few days of travel had been…polar. Sometimes the brothers could act like the backseat was supposed to be empty anyways, and busied themselves with cracking old jokes and batting words back and forth. Sometimes, when they fell silent, Sam would curl up against the window with a blanket over him and his phone in his hands. Dean would glance over and see Sam’s wan face ghostly lit by the phone’s light and feel tempted to ask whether he was talking to Cas as well as Kevin these days. He never did ask because he knew himself too well. Lingering and pining didn’t suit him; better to concentrate on the white lines of the road and the way that the stars shone brighter at this elevation.

And then they had days like today. Where the sheer weirdness, the amazingness, of their surroundings pushed more personal thoughts out of the way.

“Cross bedding,” Sam said triumphantly as the shuttle pulled into their stop. “That’s what it is. Cross bedding.”

“Hm?” Dean grabbed his backpack and stood, tapping Sam’s shoulder to remind him that they needed to get off.

“All those swooping lines.” Sam stood and distractedly grabbed for his own backpack. “Cross bedding. They come from massive dunes, like what you’d see in the Sahara Desert.” Sam shuffled behind Dean as they waited for the crowds to filter from the shuttle. “This says that part of the rock was deposited in huge deserts,” Sam continued, sounding excited. “Can you imagine?”

“It’s still kind of a desert,” Dean told him.

“You get what I’m talking about, though.”

“Sure.” Dean stepped from the shuttle and moved to escape the worst of the crowds. “C’mon, Sammy, where we going? You’re the one with the map.”

Dean turned around and found his dumb brother still standing in front of the shuttle doors and blocking traffic. He stared at something near the restrooms, his eyes squinted.

“Sam!” Dean called. When Sam didn’t respond, Dean swore and cupped his hands around his mouth. “ _SAM_!”

That made Sam jerk his head over and realize that Dean stood all the way over there. He started wading through the crowd, his pamphlet gripped in one hand and a pensive expression on his face.

“You okay?” Dean asked, frowning, as Sam approached him.

“Yeah.” Sam waved the pamphlet vaguely. He was lying; Dean didn’t think he needed to be too perceptive to catch that. But he didn’t feel like pushing Sam either and instead said, “So where’s the trail?”

“Here.” Sam gestured to where a good number of people were ambling. “It’ll be kind of crowded, but it’s supposed to be really pretty.”

“Lead the way.” Dean hefted his backpack and followed Sam along a crowded dirt trail that rang with more languages than Dean had ever heard in one place. Dean asked Sam at one point whether he’d heard English in the last five minutes and Sam had to admit that he’d mostly heard French.

They soon swung past a small river, and the trail followed its path. The river meant that the path offered more greenery than Dean had seen in one place for a long time. Long grasses and aspens grew to their left; to their right, the rock soared above their heads in a sheer wall that still somehow had crannies for determined plants to take root and grow. Boulders at the base of the wall of rock showcased the swooping, tight lines that Sam had called cross bedding. Dean found himself running his fingers along the lines, trying to imagine that the grains beneath his fingers had been here for a few million years; tried to imagine something that old. He let his hand drop after a moment.

He caught up with Sam taking pictures of walls damp with water that trickled from unseen cracks. He didn’t urge Sam to hurry up, just jammed his hands in his pockets and enjoyed the sense of water and green things surrounding them. Not that the forests of Colorado and Wyoming hadn’t been green, but Dean could always tell that they were harder pressed than the deciduous forests and plains of the Midwest. He always felt like a visitor out West; home was where the air hung muggy and the grass grew violently.

Sam started moving again, and Dean slowly followed.

The trail was neither long nor arduous, and soon they arrived at the river where it ended. People had brought bathing suits and lunches, and several groups of them ranged along the rocky shore. People waded through the shallow water and children sat in it while busying themselves with pulling smoothed stones from the riverbed. Sam asked Dean if he wanted to sit, and Dean agreed.

They ended up with their bare feet in the water and their backpacks sprawled in the sand behind them, sitting in silence and people watching.

“Where are they going?” Dean nodded at the people who continued to wade down the river.

“You have to do that to get to the Narrows,” Sam told him. “These super thin canyons. I dunno, wasn’t sure if you wanted to slosh through water like that.”

“Not really,” Dean admitted. “But if you wanted to…”

Sam shrugged. “I’m fine,” he said. Dean didn’t think Sam would say that if Cas was present, but that was neither here nor there. Dean directed his attention back to his feet beneath the swift current. He didn’t want to think about the last time he’d sat with his feet in a canyon river.

Maybe that explained why, when he lifted his head, he thought he was hallucinating for several long seconds. Only when Sam uttered a rough “Fucking _hell_ ” beside him did Dean’s heart sink at the realization that yes, that was Cas wading through the river several yards away from them. He was too far away for Dean to see the details of his face, but the shirt couldn’t have been mistaken. Dean had no idea whether Cas hadn’t glimpsed them yet, or had seen them and was ignoring them. He felt split with the urge to stand, wave his hands, and shout Cas’ name and the desire to hide himself in the crowd before Cas could see him.

Only then Sam—of course _Sam_ sprang up from where he’d been sitting, sloshed through the water with impunity, and barreled up to Cas like an angry bear. Dean scrambled to his feet and witnessed Cas blanch as he recognized the angry, 6’4’’ man sloshing toward him. Before Dean could decide whether to intervene, Sam had reached Cas and shoved him hard enough to send him stumbling back several steps.

Dean sighed to the heavens then started walking toward them because it wouldn’t do to cause a scene with little kids staring.

“— _did_ see you at the parking lot. I ought to deck you right now.” Dean heard as he got closer. “Acting all cryptic like we didn’t deserveto know where the hell you’d been. I _knew_ something was up, and you have the fucking gallto tell me bullshit like, ‘Oh I’m safe and have enough food. That should be enough.’” Sam took a breath. “I ought to _deck_ you,” he repeated.

Cas looked stricken, and the expression only increased when his eyes flicked over Sam’s shoulder and landed on Dean. Dean didn’t know what expression to give Cas, so he settled for neutral. Dean stopped a foot behind Sam and waited.

He supposed he should have been more surprised to find Cas at Zion. But really, he realized, he knew Cas too well to expect him to go right back to Kansas. Not when he had an entire landscape of geology to explore.

“I’m…” Cas started, then faltered, silent. From Dean’s vantage point, he could see Sam glaring harder. “I guess you ought to deck me now and get it out of the way,” Cas managed.

Sam tilted his head back, sighed hard, and then surged forward to toss his arms around Cas’ shoulders. Cas’ eyed widened as he was tugged forward, and his eyes met Dean’s. Dean shrugged. _Not sure what you were expecting from Sammy._

Cas’ eyes folded at the edges, and he ended up wrapping his arms around Sam’s neck and burying his face into his shoulder. Dean stood like a sentry to them, aware that they were getting some stares but unable to give a rat’s ass. Another version of him might have decided to join in and make it a group hug. But this version, the one standing in a shallow, swift river in Zion, felt too weary and wary to do anything like that. He just watched.

When Sam and Cas parted, they simultaneously looked over at Dean to seek his reaction. Dean lifted his chin and said, “Hey, Cas.”

“Hello.” Cas nodded once.

“You doing okay?” Dean asked. He could give Cas that much.

“Yes,” Cas said. He looked to be ready to open his mouth to say something else then seemed to decide against it.

“Good.” Dean nodded. “You need money or anything? Clean clothes?”

“I’m all right.”

“Good.” Dean could see Sam’s face growing stiff, but he couldn’t take the time or the words to explain himself. He took a breath. “If you need someone to drive you anywhere, we can do that. Or if you want to get home eventually and not have to buy a plane ticket. Or you’re just in trouble. You have our numbers. It doesn’t matter where we are, we can come get you, okay?”

“I’m fine.” Cas nodded. “But thank you.”

“Cool.” Dean nodded back. He gave a small smile. “Well. Take care, okay?”

He turned around so he wouldn’t have to look at Sam’s or Cas’ faces.

“Okay,” Cas said behind him. His voice was so thin it sounded liable to snap. Dean kept wading and felt something heavy coalesce in his chest.

***

Dean was sitting by their backpacks when Sam returned to him. He settled himself close enough to Dean for their shoulders to brush. Dean waited for Sam to tell him that he had been too cold, too harsh, that he should give Cas a chance. When Sam didn’t speak for five minutes, then for ten, Dean gave in and looked over at his brother.

He found Sam staring pensively at the river. As if he felt the weight of Dean’s gaze, Sam glanced up.

“Hey,” Dean said.

“Cas went back.” Sam nodded his head to the trail they had come down. “He’s staying in one of the campsites.”

“Ours?”

“Another one.”

Dean nodded and sifted his toes in the sand at the bottom of the river.

“He hitchhiked here all the way from Yellowstone,” Sam continued. Dean had guessed something like that, but that didn’t stop the little thump in his stomach.

“Guy’s lucky he hasn’t been mugged yet,” he muttered.

“I knew he hadn’t gone back to Lawrence,” Sam said in a brooding voice. “I’ve been texting him and…” Sam shifted to face his brother better. “Dean, I should have told you, I’m sorry.”

Dean shrugged. “I kind of guessed it already. It’s _Cas_. He goes off-trail in bear country.”

Sam made a sound akin to a laugh.

“I think I scared him,” he admitted.

“Dude, you looked in a mirror lately?” Dean nudged Sam’s shoulder. “You’re a mountain man.”

 Sam shook his head, but the smile didn’t come.

“I was frustrated,” he said. Dean shrugged and looked at the canyon walls again. He could feel Sam watching him.

“I’m trying not to be the one who’s holding on this time,” Dean said without looking over. “Because if I just threw my arms open again, it’d be the same as last time. And he’d just leave again. I want to do it, but I can’t.”

Sam sighed. Dean leaned a little more into Sam, and Sam returned the favor.

***

Dean would have been lying to claim that he went through the next few days in Zion without being a little gun shy. He kept expecting Cas to pop up on their trail or in the gift shops, all messy black hair and ragged camping clothes. Cas never did appear. Sam reported that Cas was camping in the outskirts of the park, and Dean imagined that he’d moved on as soon as he’d run into the Winchesters. It didn’t matter. It was probably for the better.

The next big stop was the Grand Canyon, and they aimed the Impala for Arizona as they rolled out of Zion. Dean had just popped in AC/DC and gotten into a good speed when he spotted a single figure down the road.

“No way,” he uttered as they got closer and a familiar backpack became visible. Sam looked over at him with an expression of, _This is your call_.

For about twenty seconds, Dean thought he was going to keep driving. Then he got closer and saw how Cas trudged and that the back of his neck looked burnt. He swore and slammed on the brakes.

“Hey!” he yelled as he rolled down the window, and Cas jerked to look back at them. The way his eyes widened would have been funny in any other circumstance. “Where you going?” Dean asked.

Cas stopped walking completely and stared at them.

“Flagstaff,” he finally said. “Arizona.”

“Cool, we’re going in the same direction.” Dean swallowed, aware that he had no self-control and this was an expressly bad idea. “Get in.”

Cas didn’t move. He was doing a remarkable deer-in-the-headlights impression.

Sam leaned out of the window. “C’mon Cas.”

“I shouldn’t,” Cas said.

“You’re going to end up in a warehouse with your kidneys missing,” Dean said, and the shocked, the surprised, then amused expression on Cas’ face was almost worth all of it.

Cas visibly hesitated. Then he walked over and opened the back door. Dean swore that the Impala purred approvingly.

***

Dean might have predicted that the several-hour ride from Zion to Flagstaff would be awkward. It wasn’t quite that. He tried to come up with the right word as he sped down the highway and kept glancing at Cas in the backseat.

Anticipatory, he decided when they finally reached the Arizona-Utah border. It was as if they all waited for something to crash around their ears, but nothing was forthcoming. Sam’s legs kept jumping up and down as he watched the scenery and Cas in equal measure. Cas had his eyes glued to the window and not much else. No one spoke at all for the first few hours, letting Dean’s music fill the space among them. Yet Dean didn’t feel like it was the kind of not talking that meant they didn’t know what to say. It was the kind where they were afraid of disturbing something, where the lack of words was safer than anything else.

Or maybe Dean was making it all up. Who knew?

When they rolled into Flagstaff after several hours, Dean almost immediately discovered that the town was largely composed of one-way streets, tourists for the Grand Canyon, and bicyclists.

“Where are you staying?” Dean asked as he slowed for a red light.

“Hael is here this summer,” Cas told him, and it tool Dean several seconds to remember Hael as one of Cas’ fellow grad students.

“Really?” Sam turned around; he looked genuinely interested.

Cas nodded. “She’s doing research down in the Grand Canyon, splitting her summer between field work in the canyon and analyzing samples at the university here.”

“She know you’re here?” Dean asked. The red light turned green and he eased Baby forward.

“I talked to her yesterday. She said I can crash on her couch for a few days.”

“That’s good of her,” Dean commented. He could see Cas watching him as if searching for some shred of suspicion or jealousy. He was wasting his time. “Where does she live then?”

“She’s got housing on campus,” Cas said after a long silence. “But she won’t be back from work for another few hours.”

“What were you going to do?”

“Wander around town, I guess.”

Dean and Sam ended up exchanging a glance.

“I’ve got to get some stuff before we head to the Grand Canyon,” Dean heard himself say. “Sam can keep you company.”

“I can take care of myself,” Cas said slowly. Only then Sam turned around and looked just offended enough for Cas to backpedal and say that the company would be good to have. That relaxed something in Dean. He and Cas might be all to shit, but he didn’t want Cas’ relationship with his brother to go down the drain too.

He ended up dropping them off downtown and, as he brought the Impala to a stop, realized that he probably wouldn’t see Cas for a long while.

“Cas.” Dean turned around suddenly, and Cas paused with his hand on the door. He looked at Dean with something like anticipation, something like wariness. “What I said earlier,” Dean told him, “it’s still true. You get in trouble, you know we’ll come.”

Cas’ eyes relaxed.

“I always knew that,” he said.

***

Sam and Cas, after some discussion, agreed to find somewhere to eat lunch. They eventually settled on a small café at the edge of town, and Sam offered to go in and get them food. When he emerged ten minutes later, Cas was seated beneath a deep green umbrella with his gaze directed idly toward the sidewalk. Sam took time to look over Cas as he neared. He looked shaggier and thinner than Sam recalled from Yellowstone.

“So.” Sam slid a wrapped sandwich to Cas and settled into his own chair. “You have any good hitchhiking stories?”

“I guess,” Cas said distractedly, frowning slightly at his sandwich without seeming to see it. He looked up suddenly. “Sam, I want to apologize for not being open enough with you,” he said, like he was reciting something he’d memorized. “I recognize that was selfish of me and—“

“Cas,” Sam cut him off. “It’s okay. I was just pissed.”

“You had a right to be,” Cas said earnestly.

“Yeah. And then I got over it. We’re fine, Cas, don’t worry.”

Cas sighed and rubbed at his forehead.

“I’m nervous that I’m going to become estranged from both of you at once and…” He closed his mouth self-consciously and shrugged.

Sam rolled in his lips then patted Cas’ shoulder.

“You’d have to do something pretty fucked up to shake me off. Or Dean, honestly.” Cas made an incredulous face, so Sam continued, “Dude, did you not just hear him? He still cares about you. That’s not going to change for much.”

“But we’re back to not really talking.” Cas dug a hand into his hair. Sam sighed.

“I’m not going to pretend like I know whether you guys are going to end up together again,” Sam said slowly. “But I do see you getting past all this eventually. Because you guys were friends before anything else. Good enough friends can get through a lot.”

“You believe in the power of friendship?” Cas asked with a tired, wry grin.

“The power of love,” Sam proclaimed. He then had to take a big bite of his sandwich because he felt a little ridiculous. He could hear Cas laughing, though, so it was fine.

After they’d eaten, Cas suggested that they walk around town for a bit. They gathered their things and ambled toward the main cluster of shops that lay across the railroad tracks. As they approached the tracks, they found that a train was lumbering across their path. Graffiti and shipping company labels sped past them to the steady tune of _chaka-chaka-chaka_. They ended up watching it pass with probably as much fascination as the five-year-old a few paces away from them who kept pointing and squeaking, “Twain! Twain!”

“There’s something about trains, isn’t there?” Cas commented when the line of cars finally ended and the bars lifted to let them pass. “Something old-fashioned and romantic.”

“I think we’ve seen too many movies about people hopping on trains to run away from home,” Sam agreed. Maybe they both sensed where that conversation might be headed because they let the topic die away.

Instead, Cas commented that he needed to get souvenirs for his family sooner or later and Sam dutifully volunteered to help him find suitable gifts for Anna, Gabe, and Naomi, Castiel’s mother.

“Anna and Gabe will be easy,” Cas said as they wandered through a small store that Dean would have called “artsy” and “hipster.” “If I get them t-shirts, they’ll be happy. Mother will be harder.”

“Your mom scares me,” Sam said absently as he examined a set of paintings from a local artist.

“Which is why I didn’t believe you for an instant when you threatened to call her,” Cas called back to Sam.

“I would have called Anna and Gabe, though,” Sam protested. “Anna’s pretty protective and Gabe would be willing to drop everything and go look for you.”

“That he would,” Cas allowed. “The dangers of being the baby brother.”

“Man, I hear you there,” Sam said, and earned himself a wide grin from Cas.

Sam paused at a rack of bumper stickers, largely because he kept an eye out for that kind of thing these days. As he spun the rack idly, he suddenly saw one sticker that made him release a small, surprised laugh.

“Sam?” Cas called out suddenly. “Do you know anything about jewelry? Do you think my mother would like this?”

“I’m not too good at that either,” Sam called back. He grabbed the sticker and went to join Cas. “Which one? I’ll try and give an intelligent opinion.”

When Dean finally texted letting Sam know that he was ready to go, Sam asked Cas whether he’d be okay to find Hael on his own. Cas promised that he would be. After that followed a long moment of not quite meeting one another’s eye before Cas gave in and reached up to give Sam a hug. Sam felt a lot of things in that hug. _Take care of yourself_. _Watch out for Dean. I’m glad we’re friends._

***

Half an hour later, Sam watched through the side mirror as Flagstaff disappeared behind them. He glanced once at Dean, saw the set of his jaw, and settled back in his seat to leave his brother to his own thoughts. He toyed with his phone, then gave in and sent a text to Kevin.

[Sam] _Hi. How’d the evaluation go?_

[Kevin] _It was as intimidating as I predicted. But I think Crowley is more or less pleased with what I’ve been doing. It takes some reading between the lines, but I don’t think I’m making it up. Still with Cas?_

[Sam] _We left just now._ Sam rolled in his lips, then added, _I wish he could have stayed with us but I could tell it wouldn’t have worked._

[Kevin] _They’ll have to figure it out for themselves_

[Sam] _Yeah_.

Kevin didn’t answer after that. Sam didn’t think too much of it. Kevin was often sent on various errands or had to hide his phone when Crowley was in the same room. Sam kept the phone in one hand just in case and looked up at the road.

“How far from the canyon?” Sam asked.

“About an hour,” Dean told him before falling silent again. Sam settled into his seat and watched the pine forests speed past.

Somewhere halfway through their trip, the cassette they’d been listening to finished and Dean rummaged through the old shoebox with his eyes on the road. He pulled one out, glanced at it, then with one hand opened the case and replaced the music. Sam glanced down at the cassette Dean had chosen and felt his eyebrows raise. A minute later, John Denver and his guitar warbled from the speakers. Sam knew better than to say anything.

Instead he moved to slip his phone into his pocket and felt something already in there. It was the sticker he’d bought earlier, Sam realized when he extracted it. He’d meant to give it to Cas and…well. He’d see him soon enough. Sam stuck both sticker and phone into his jacket pocket and leaned back, listening to John Denver sing about coal mines.

***

They lucked out yet again and snagged a campsite. Sam was in the middle of rooting their tent out of the trunk when he heard Dean’s phone ring, followed by a brisk, “Y’ello?”

Assuming it was someone like Charlie, Sam dumped the tent in the dusty grass at his feet and next hauled the cooler out.

“Right,” Dean said. Sam paused. Something in his brothers’ voice sounded off; too much like the numerous times Cas called asking if he could sleep at their house tonight and never divulging what had happened. Sam peered at Dean to find a crease between his brows.

“No, I really can’t…yeah.” Dean covered his eyes briefly with one hand. “I understand. Yes. Yeah. Thanks.”

Dean hung up with a hard exhale through pursed lips. He turned and caught Sam’s expression.

“What?” Sam asked.

Dean sniffed and stuffed the phone back into his pocket. “That was Garth’s uncle. The employee left earlier than expected and he’s already found someone to fill the position who can start work now.” Dean shrugged again. “I get it. He needed the work done.”

“Dean,” Sam started.

“It’s fine.” Dean gave Sam one of those horrible, fake smiles. “Just means job searching when we get home.”

Sam clenched his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If we were in Kansas right now…”

“Nah.” Dean waved a hand. “I’m glad we’re out here, okay? I really am. I mean, we’ve seen more in a few weeks than plenty of people see in a lifetime.”

“Still,” Sam huffed, annoyed. “You shouldn’t have to…if you’d just consider _looking_ at getting a degree.” Sam paused then, fully prepared to hear Dean trot out his usual dismissal. Only.

Only Sam watched, mildly shocked, as Dean’s shoulders slumped and he rubbed at the back of his neck. He stared at the ground for too long before lifting his head. He looked worn down.

“Okay,” he said in a low voice.

“Okay?” Sam echoed.

“Yeah. Okay.” Dean sighed. He raised open hands and gave a wry smile. “You’ve battered at this long enough. I’ll look. I’ll see what I’ll need for an application.”

Sam blinked and felt as if he ought to be feeling triumphant right now. Instead he felt at a loss.

“I just…you deserve better,” he finally said.

“That’s real sweet of you.”

“I’m serious.” Sam straightened himself slightly. “I mean, if you’re serious, I’ll help. I’ve done a little research of who has the best engineering programs within our price range, but we can do something more in-depth. I bet there are loads of scholarships for students like you, and then there are the degree-specific scholarships. Or, I dunno, I was just assuming you’d want mechanical engineering. There’s obviously other—“

“Sam.”

“Yeah. Rambling. I know.” Sam grinned. He couldn’t help it. Dean rolled his eyes, but his mouth definitely curved up at its edges.

“C’mon, Sammy,” Dean gestured to the tent. “Let’s finish up here. I wanna see that big hole in the ground everyone’s so pumped about.”

***

The Grand Canyon, they discovered later that day, appeared without warning. One minute he and Dean were walking through a scrubby forest on a trail, the next they found themselves on the edge of a precipice that delved far into the earth. They ended up standing at that spot for several minutes, staring unabashedly at the massive scar in the earth. The canyon was all sheer walls and formations of green and red and orange rock, the opposite rim nothing more than a paintbrush of dark green in the far distance. Sam imagined falling over the edge of the canyon and shuddered compulsively.

“You can’t see the bottom,” Dean finally said. Sam looked over and found his brother standing a generous few paces from guardrail, yet still gazing at the canyon with an entranced expression. None of the tightness or defeat from earlier remained in the set of his shoulders.

“You can’t,” Sam agreed.

Eventually, they pulled themselves away from the view to walk along the concrete path that followed the canyon. It was bustling, but not crowded. Dean and Sam could amble along it without fear of holding up traffic, eyes glued on the canyon’s vista. It wasn’t the kind of thing that allowed one to look away for too long.

They ended up at a relatively uncrowded lookout point that sat much further down the path. From here, anyone could have scrambled right to the edge of the canyon without barriers. Sam’s inner adrenaline junkie urged to him to do just that, to sit on the edge of the canyon and dangle his feet over. But from the way Dean walked a little stiffer than usual and compulsively tugged at Sam’s jacket to keep him a healthy distance from the rim, Sam doubted Dean’s nerves could handle it. He could do it later.

He and Dean found a worn bench and sat, fishing out water bottles, bananas, and slightly squished granola bars for their late lunch. Sam squinted out over the canyon as they ate, and wished yet again that Cas were here to wax poetic about it.

“Y’know,” Dean said, like he’d picked up on Sam’s thoughts, “I bet Cas would have some big analogy for this place. Comparing it to life or something.”

“Mm.”

“Once Cas told me that I reminded him of, uh, of Kansas. The Great Plains.”

“Did he?” Sam kept his voice casual.

“Yeah.” Dean nodded. “That’s typical of him, isn’t it?” He sounded amused, but also resigned somehow. “Then he said that he’s like mountains.”

“Hm.” Sam hummed around a mouthful of granola bar. He swallowed. “So, like basin and range,” he said.

“What?” A pause. “That book?”

“The book’s titled from the basin and range province,” Sam recited, the words coming back to him neatly. He’d certainly read them enough times. “It’s an area across Nevada, most of Arizona, a little of Utah, New Mexico. You’ve got these sudden narrow mountain ranges separated by valleys and basins. Basin and range.”

Sam looked over and found Dean with an indecipherable expression.

“And see, the mountains are constantly eroding even as they’re being built up. The eroded sediment fills these basins.”

“Okay,” Dean said slowly. “But that’s not the Great Plains.”

“Yeah, I know.” Sam shrugged. He paused, then said, “But I do know that the Rocky Mountains made the Great Plains.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, same thing with the erosion. A bunch of the sediment from these growing mountains washes to the east and fills in the area there. The soil in the Plains? A lot of that is there thanks to the Rockies.”

“Huh.” Dean looked back over the Grand Canyon. Long silence, and then he said, “You’re getting pretty smart about all that geology stuff.” His voice sounded a tad too casual, but not enough so for Sam to be able to pin anything down.

Sam shrugged. “I’m trying.” Dean still looked vague as he watched the canyon, so Sam nudged his side and asked, “So, did Cas assign me a landscape in this whole analogy?”

“You’ll have to ask him,” Dean said. He grinned suddenly. “Bet you’re something like a volcano. ‘Cause you produce toxic gases all the time.”

“Hah,” Sam said dryly. “You’re one to talk.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Sam shoved him hard enough to nearly shove Dean off the bench, eliciting a loud, real laugh.

***

That night, as Dean scraped dinner together, Sam took advantage of the very decent cell phone signal to shoot a few texts. First to Cas, who assured him that he had found Hael and was now helping her set up the sleeper sofa.

[Sam] _So question. If I were a geologic landscape, what would I be?_

[Cas] _Did Dean tell you about that?_

[Sam] _Might have mentioned it in passing._

Sam wondered if he should have mentioned it at all. Something about Cas’ text rang oddly with him.

[Sam] _Sorry. Does it mean something?_

[Cas] _You’re fine. It sort of instigated the argument that led to me leaving in Yellowstone._

Sam’s stomach dropped a little, and he glanced over to Dean’s back. He started writing a text to reiterate that he was sorry, only then his phone buzzed with a text from Cas.

[Cas] _You’d be a river._

[Cas] _They carry the soil from the mountains to the plains. They can’t be intimidated by the depth of the rock bed, they just go and carve out whole canyons. They’re very strong, vital to the whole system working, and never the same from day to day. They’re the lifeblood._

[Cas] _I’m being lyrical right now, I realize that._

Sam shook his head absently, trying and failing to ignore the way something unfolded inside his chest.

[Sam] _I like it._

[Cas] _Thank you for indulging me. I just needed to make sure you knew you were important. I’m afraid sometimes that I haven’t managed that in the middle of Dean and me. I appreciate it._

Sam exhaled hard.

[Sam] _It’s nice to hear it, I’ll admit._ _But you and Dean are also my family, so I’m willing to do plenty for you guys._

[Cas] _Thank you_

Sam tried for a note of levity.

[Sam] _You should write geology-based astrology, btw_

The reply took some time.

[Cas] _Hael just had to ask me why I started cracking up. I’ll do that; I’ll make a fortune. But for now, I think I have to go; we’re headed out for dinner._

[Sam] _Talk to you later then._

Still basking in the warm feeling in his chest, Sam next scrolled through his list of contacts until he found Kevin.

[Sam] _Hey. What’s up?_

[Kevin] _Not much. Can I call?_

[Sam] _Sure_

A few seconds later, Sam’s phone buzzed and he walked a little ways away to answer it.

“Hi,” he greeted. “You okay?”

“Tired,” Kevin sighed, and he sounded it. As had become usual in the last few weeks, Sam wished he could reach through the phone and give Kevin the hug it sounded like he needed.

“What happened?” Something slammed in the background; it sounded like a cabinet door.

“My schedule for next semester is all screwed up right now,” Kevin said dully. “Crowley was in a foul mood today. I spilled hot coffee on myself. My mom had to take an extra shift and is tired and cranky. There’s probably other stuff I’m forgetting.”

“Sorry, Kevin.” Sam worked to put as much empathy in his voice as possible. “Days like that suck.”

“Yeah,” Kevin sighed. “But what about you? You at the Grand Canyon?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. He proceeded to leave behind any of his own drama and instead focused on describing the canyon in as much detail as he could. He felt like he was babbling, but Kevin had told him once that listening to Sam talk about these things was relaxing. Sam had had no idea how to take this.

“It’s just really amazing,” Sam said for what must have been the fifth time. “Seriously, I wish you were here.” A pause. “To see it,” Sam tacked on.

“Yeah.” Kevin sounded mildly amused now. “Me too.” Sam heard a brief inhale. “Maybe one day we, uh, maybe we could go back and see these places. If you don’t mind seeing them again.”

“I’d not mind seeing them again,” Sam said, and imagined treading these roads again, but this time with Kevin. Watching him see a bison for the first time. Gazing at Bryce Canyon. Nights with the campfire as their only light. Sam grinned almost involuntarily. “We should plan for it.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Just you and me. It’ll be great.”

“Yeah! That’d be…yeah!” Kevin’s voice had inched up a few octaves. Sam bit his lip, gazed into the darkening sky then let his grin explode even wider.

“Hey, Kevin?”

“Yeah?”

“When I get back to Kansas…you want to go out sometime?”

A long pause followed this.

“Go out…like a date?” Kevin ventured.

“Exactly like a date.”

“Oh,” Kevin said, sounding a little breathless. “Yeah, I’d love that. If you’re okay…I mean, after Ruby you might not be keen on…all that.”

Sam felt something warm explode inside of him. “Thanks for thinking about that. But I promise, it’s okay. I asked you, didn’t I?”

“You did,” Kevin allowed. “You definitely did.”

Sam imagined what it would be like to date Kevin Tran. A lot of discussions of political issues. More than a few cello recitals. Scads of height difference jokes from Dean. It would also involve things like kissing Kevin, holding his hand, getting to watch from close quarters as he got in the throes of discussing government. It’d be fantastic, Sam decided as he looked over the silhouettes of trees, into where the first stars were appearing.

He was looking forward to it.

***

Cas had been mooching off of Hael’s generosity for five whole days and needed to figure himself out.

That was a direct quote.

“It’s true,” Hael protested, digging her spatula through a pan of stir-fry. “I get it; you need a place to crash, but I’m not technically supposed to let you stay here for too long.”

“I know,” Cas admitted. He sat at the kitchen table and had his chin in his hand. “I’m just not sure where I’m headed next.”

“I have an idea.” Hael turned from the pan to give him a wry look. “It’s about an hour’s drive away and one of the most significant geologic features on the continent.” Cas sighed. “I’ll give you a hint,” Hael continued. “It starts with grand and ends with—“

“Yes, okay.” Cas rolled his eyes. He glared over at Hael, but they’d spent too much time stuck in the same closet-sized room for her to take the glare seriously.

“I’m in the middle of lab stuff right now,” Hael continued. “Otherwise I’d offer to drive you over.”

“I can hitchhike,” Cas said absently. He fiddled with a scrap of paper someone had left on the table. He heard Hael sigh and set down her spatula.

“Hey,” she said, and Cas looked up to find her leaning on the table. “I’m sorry, I’m just trying to get some tough love going here. I’ve seen people drag around over the end of relationships way too much. You need to get out there; distract yourself a little.”

She sounded earnest, and Cas found that he appreciated it.

“Yeah,” Cas straightened. “You’re right.”

***

That translated into Cas spending the next day packing, saying good bye to Hael and promising to watch out for himself, then delving into Flagstaff in search of a ride. He found it fairly readily: a cheerful couple from Minnesota who asked Cas just enough questions about himself to keep them all occupied for the drive.

Cas knew that the Winchesters were still camping at the canyon, but never caught sight of them as he staked out a camping site. He did spot the Impala parked next to familiar tents and ended up choosing a site a healthy distance away. He didn’t want to start another round of awkwardness and debates.

Cas slept tolerably well that night, and ended up waking before dawn. That led him, on a whim, to decide to hike out to the rim and watch the sunrise. It was, he thought, one of those things one should do if given the chance.

He found a suitably unused ledge and settled himself at its edge. The sky was still pale gray, and Cas busied himself with an energy bar as his breakfast.

The first fingers of sunlight lit the top layers of the Grand Canyon a pale orange. Cas stared at the light, sharp against the cream of the limestone. The light strengthened and moved across the canyon. Cas felt his breath hitch at the sight, his food forgotten. In a sudden urge, he stood with his gaze fixed on the canyon walls. He thought of how long each rock layer had taken to be set down. How long the Colorado River had needed to delve through all that rock. How there had likely been canyons as spectacular as this one in the past, but they had been long ago erased. The time scale of the Earth spooled out from Cas’ feet and stretched into distances unimaginable. Cas supposed that on some level it was terrifying. But all he could conjure was awe. Sharp, pure joy that something so unlikely existed. That he got to study it. That in the end, he couldn’t possibly hurt it.

And then, because Cas was a romantic at heart, he opened his arms as if to embrace the whole notion. The millions of years represented by the canyon, and the millions more that extended on either side of it. The sun bathed his face, and he grinned so hard his cheeks hurt.

“ _Cas_!”

Cas had to blink. He turned away and saw a figure scrambling toward him. It shouted his name again, then something indistinguishable.

“What?” Cas shouted back.

“ _Don’t. Jump_.”

Cas frowned then finally recognized that it was Dean practically sprinting toward him. He had a terrified expression. Cas hurriedly stepped back from the rim and strode toward Dean.

“I’m not jumping,” he called out.

Dean slowed down suddenly, though his eyes still looked too wide.

“You’re not?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Dean came to a complete halt. He stood a few yards from Cas, and Cas could see how he flushed beneath his freckles. “Um.” Dean cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

“Why on Earth would I jump?” Cas had to ask.

“I don’t know,” Dean protested. “That’s why I panicked. You looked like you were about to do a swan dive.”

“I was…” Cas had to stop because saying something like “I was communing with the unimaginable age of our Earth” sounded a little ridiculous in hindsight. Dean’s eyes narrowed suddenly.

“You were doing some hippie thing,” he guessed.

“A little.”

“Damnit,” Dean wiped a hand down his face.

“It’s fine, though,” Cas tried to keep his voice light. “I was close to being done.” Dean made an expression like he wanted to laugh but had to stop himself.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Dean blurted. “And thought I might catch sunrise.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Cas admitted.

“Really. Well, then.”

Another bout of silence.

“Here.” Cas gave in and gestured. “Want to watch the rest?” Dean looked like he was hedging, but then nodded. They walked slowly back to the rim. The dawn light had moved deeper into the canyon and painted the walls and inner peaks. Dean eyed the edge warily, but eventually settled in beside Cas and pointedly did not look to where his legs dangled.

“It’s not a sheer drop here,” Cas told him. “You’d hit that slope first and roll for a bit. I bet you’d survive.”

“Thanks,” Dean said stiffly, but didn’t move. After several seconds, he said, “Okay, can you talk about the rock layers or something? Otherwise I’m going to think about smashed skulls.”

Cas had to hide the smile and proceeded to steadily point out the rock layers as they appeared from the top, working his way down. He could hear Dean’s breathing relax, watched his shoulders slump slightly.

“—I could give more detail if Hael was here. She’s the one studying all this in detail.”

“Hael would be well and truly talking over my head.” Dean laughed slightly. “You’re fine.” They fell into silence. The sun had risen properly, and the peculiar hue of dawn light had faded away.

“So,” Dean said. “I’ve been reading that _Basin and Range_ book.”

“Oh?” Cas glanced over with a light frown.

“Yeah, Sam was talking about it a few days ago.” Dean glanced over too. “Apparently the Great Plains came from the erosion of the Rocky Mountains.”

“That’s a simplified way to put it,” Cas allowed.

“So going back to that big analogy of yours,” Dean leaned back on his hands, “the plains wouldn’t be what they are without the mountains. All that…” Dean waved a hand. “Good soil. The basis for that comes from the mountains, ultimately, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose,” Cas said blankly. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs and clasping his hands between his knees. “Dean,” he said slowly. “Are you trying to apologize? Or something? Via geology metaphors?”

Dean blinked, then threw up one hand.

“Sorry for trying,” he said. “I’ve gathered that that’s how you communicate.”

“Not entirely.”

“A lot.”

“Maybe.”

Cas burst out a small laugh suddenly and buried his face in one hand. When he pulled his hand away, he found Dean smiling slightly into the sun.

“I’m sorry,” Cas said.

“For?”

“For all it.” Cas lifted his head. “Me not being sensitive or patient enough with you. For sleeping with Meg and—shit, and I slept with someone else while I was hitchhiking.” The words rolled from his lips with impunity.

Dean’s lips rolled in.

“It’s okay,” he said. Cas frowned.

“It’s not,” he protested.

“Not really,” Dean agreed. “But I’m making the…the active decision to be okay with it. Or I’m going to tell myself it’s okay until I believe it.”

“You can’t smother your feelings.” Cas shook his head hard. “They’re legitimate, Dean.”

“I know they are. They’re also _my_ feelings. So I’ll handle them how I see fit.” He took a breath. “And I’m sorry for being too scared of what I wanted. For pushing you away all the time. I wasn’t always that sensitive to your feelings either, Cas.”

Cas opened his mouth, then closed it and looked out at the canyon again to collect himself. At this point, in the past, he’d have been leaning forward to kiss Dean. But he sensed that it wasn’t the right thing to do now.

“Cas.” Dean looked earnest when Cas glanced over. “I’m not saying that we need to make another promise to try and get back together right now. ‘Cause we still did a lot of damage to each other and that’s going to take time to deal with.”

Cas exhaled hard. “I don’t know if I trust us yet. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“Right. But I don’t want this not-talking, ignoring-each other thing we’ve been doing all last year,” Dean continued. “It’s hard on us; it’s hard on Sam. I, uh.” Dean licked his lips. “I want you in my life, Cas. I want to listen to you talk about rocks and cook you dinner. I want us to be…around each other without all the bitterness. We can do that, can’t we? We were friends before anything else, weren’t we?”

“We were.” Cas sighed. He examined Dean’s features: the familiar green eyes, the set of his mouth, the comforting shape of his jaw. “I’d like that too,” he said. “Just…to be able to be around you.”

Dean bobbed his head, his eyes suddenly looking damp. He half laughed and wiped at an eye. “Damn it, Cas,” he said. “Usually the mushy feelings talk is Sam’s department.”

“It won’t kill you,” Cas promised. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Dean’s shoulders. Dean returned the hug, his arms squeezing Cas’ rib cage. Cas grinned hard into Dean’s shoulder and breathed in the scent of him. He smelled of home.

“All right.” Dean sighed when they parted. “That’s enough of that for today.” He made a rough noise when Cas shoved lightly him in retaliation. “Hey, I can still fall,” he snapped.

“You won’t,” Cas promised. “Do you think Sam is up yet?”

“Probably. You want to come? I’ll cook breakfast.”

“Sure.” Cas failed to smother the burst of warmth that he could say it.

“And, um.” Dean shrugged like it didn’t matter anyway. “Baby’s backseat is kind of empty.”

“Yes, Dean.” Cas touched at Dean’s shoulder. “Absolutely.”

Dean grinned unabashedly as they stood and started back to the campsites. The Grand Canyon retreated behind them, now fully lit.

At one point along the trail, Dean thrust his hands into his jacket pockets, then frowned and pulled out something white and thin.

“This is Sam’s jacket,” Dean realized out loud. He scrutinized whatever was in his hand then released a sudden huff of wry laughter. “You guys buy this?” he asked.

“What?” Cas leaned over and realized it was a vinyl sticker. It resembled the rack of similar stickers he’d seen back in Flagstaff, when he’d been in that store with Sam. He read it then shook his head.

“That’s appropriate,” he said after a moment.

“Here.” Dean handed it to him. “It’s for your water bottle, right?”

They paused so Cas could peel off the paper backing and stick it across his blue Nalgene, much more scuffed and crowded with stickers from their many destinations these days.

_What a long, strange trip it’s been,_ his water bottle now proclaimed. It felt right, Cas thought. A kind of capstone to it all.

Dean started walking again; Cas followed him to where Sam waited.


End file.
